


Halfway Gone

by NotGarfield



Series: Halfway Gone [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: "Ladybug" alternate ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Unresolved Romantic Tension, bee!Adrien, both hero and villain POV, cat!Nathalie, lots of trouble with magic, morally ambiguous Emilie, mostly supposed to be Gabenath, the freaking lovesquare is sneaking in, the s3 finale hasn't happened in this timeline, trouble with magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 52,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21962275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotGarfield/pseuds/NotGarfield
Summary: After months of stalemate between heroes and villains, a clever plan of Mayura's ends in a devastating defeat for Chat Noir and forces both sides of the fight to adjust their approaches. But just as Gabriel and Nathalie gain the upper hand in their quest to resurrect Gabriel's wife, new challenges start to arise that will rearrange their priorities and test everything they took for granted. (Summary update 3/15/20)
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Series: Halfway Gone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778356
Comments: 340
Kudos: 295
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	1. Chapter 1

Mayura didn’t see Chat Noir’s face as her sentimonster slid the ring off his finger. As she crouched behind a ledge, bracing herself against the stone to stay upright, her vision started to go white, and she struggled to concentrate on looking through the sentimonster’s eyes. She caught a flash of green light and a mop of blond hair through the static, and then the view swung to the side as her creation’s attention was drawn to a crimson blur. A wave of dizziness hit Mayura at the sudden motion and the connection snapped as she doubled over.

The cry of “Chat Noir!” from a panicked female voice reached her ears at the same moment as the thud of feet landing beside her. She fought back her dizziness and blinked at the sentimonster, trying to consolidate two blurry images into one. “The ring. Give it to me.”

As soon as she closed her hand around it (fumbling for one heart-stopping instant), she flung herself off the arch. She made a clumsy, stumbling landing on the street with her stomach churning in protest and white sparks filling her vision once again. There was no sound of pursuit. She ran a few paces to gain momentum and sprang up onto a rooftop, then across to another, and another, staggering with each landing, bumping into chimneys, boots scraping on shingles, focused only on getting far enough away to detransform safely.

Her left hand she kept fisted around the ring.

*****

The moment Adrien realized what had happened, he lurched back and curled up, shielding his face with his arms. Distantly, he heard a voice calling him. “Chat Noir!”

Rapid footsteps sounded from his left. Hands came to rest on his shoulders. “Chat Noir?” It was Ladybug’s voice. “What happened? What was that thing?”

His mind lagged like a computer on the verge of freezing, overloaded with the shock of the last minutes, as he groped for the words to shape his thought into sentences. “Mayura was here. It - it must have been a sentimonster.” His temples ached, and something heavy and wet was settling in his throat. He opened his eyes wide, trying not to let the tears spill over. “She tricked me. I’m so sorry, my lady.”

He heard her shift, and a shadow fell over him. “I’m covering you,” she said quietly. “Take off your outer shirt and put it over your face. Did Mayura see you?”

“I don’t know.” He slowly raised his face from his arms and met Ladybug’s eyes. When she saw him, she gasped, and swallowed, and then shook her head slightly. He pulled off his shirt as best he could while still half curled up, trying to hide in the shelter of Ladybug’s slim arms. “She was off behind a wall. I don’t know if she can see through the sentimonster’s eyes, or if it even got a good look at me.”

The shirt muffled his voice slightly as he draped it over his head. Through the thin white fabric, he could make out Ladybug’s brightly-colored shape as she took his arms and pulled him to his feet. Her expression was too obscured to be readable. 

“Where did Mayura and the sentimonster go?” he asked.

“I didn’t see.” Ladybug sighed. “Your identity is the first priority. I couldn’t leave you here in such an exposed place.”

Her voice held no anger or blame, but it lacked its usual merry spark, and Adrien’s stomach twisted. “I’m so sorry.”

“We’ll figure this out, kitty,” Ladybug replied with a weak chuckle. “For now, though, we need to get you home. We don’t know who caught a glimpse of your general appearance, so we need to make sure you aren’t found missing so no one starts to suspect you.”

“All right.” Gradually, in the face of Ladybug’s calm determination, Adrien’s mind was beginning to reboot. “I live” -

“Shh, not here. I know.”

“You do?”

She leaned in and whispered in his ear, so close that he could feel the warmth of her breath through the fabric covering his head. “I know you in civilian life, Adrien. I can’t explain any more right now, but I will soon.”

*****

Nathalie made her way up the front stairs of the Agreste mansion, clinging to the wrought-iron railing. The journey back had taken longer than she hoped, especially once she dropped her transformation; sight and sound reached her as though through warped glass, her prolonged leaping across rooftops had made her so motion-sick that she was forced to stop and throw up behind a dumpster in a back alley, and her hair was falling out of its bun. But the small lump she felt in the pocket of her blazer was more than enough of a consolation prize.

If her luck held, Gabriel would still be sleeping, and she could put herself back together before waking him up with the good news.

Just as she had that thought, before she was halfway up the stairs, the front door opened and Gabriel came hurrying down the steps. Before she could react, he scooped her up bridal-style. 

“Sir,” she protested, aware that they were in full view of the street, but he silenced her with a frown before turning and starting to carry her up the steps.

“Nathalie, I was worried about you. This was a very big risk, and you’re still unwell.”

Her body chose that moment to prove his point, seizing her with a fit of deep, hacking coughs that burned in her chest as though her lungs were trying to force themselves inside out. Gabriel kicked the front door closed and held her close. When the fit quieted and she dropped her head against his chest in exhaustion - hearing his heart racing, with fear or exertion she couldn't say - he brought her to the dining room and set her down in the chair where she had been earlier in the afternoon.

"Nathalie," he said in a stern voice that she hoped masked concern, "you disobeyed me again, and you put yourself in terrible danger."

"But I got Chat Noir's miraculous."

He froze in place and looked down at her. "You - you did what?"

She smiled at his open-mouthed stare and reached into the pocket of her blazer. "Didn't you think to look at the news when you saw that I was gone? I assure you this is all anyone in Paris is talking about." She opened her hand, and Gabriel reached slowly, almost fearfully, for the silver ring resting on her palm.

"I saw a picture of Mayura on the Arche de Triomphe, and that was all I needed to see. I was about to go and bring you back when I saw you coming up the steps." He turned the ring in his fingers. "I can hardly believe it. Who was he?"

Nathalie looked down. "I - didn't see. I didn't take it from him personally. It was my sentimonster, and I was controlling it from a distance."

As she finished speaking, another cough seized her before she could even try to stifle it; her glasses slipped off from the force of the spasm and dropped to the floor. Gabriel slipped the ring into his pocket and knelt beside her chair. He picked up her glasses and slid them back onto her face. Then his hands moved to the back of her head and plucked the bobby pins out of the tangle at her neck that was all that was left of her bun. He ran his fingers carefully through her hair, loosening the knots in it, and Nathalie closed her eyes under his ministrations as tingles of pleasure ran from her scalp down her spine.

At length, he drew back and placed one hand over hers on the arm of the chair. "Your plan was brilliant," he said. "I wish you hadn't put yourself in harm's way, but with such a result, well, I can't very well be angry."

She reached up, plucked the peacock brooch off her sweater and held it out to him, smiling. "I will always be here for you, whatever you need."

"Thank you, Nathalie." Her heart jumped as he leaned toward her, closing his eyes. Without her thinking about it, her own eyelids fell shut and she tilted her head toward his. Then the grip of his hand on hers loosened. Her eyes snapped open again and she met his gaze, reproaching herself for what she had assumed.

*****

Ladybug and Adrien looked down from an upstairs window at the scene playing out on the front steps. When the door shut behind the two adults, Adrien turned to Ladybug. "If you know me in civilian life, you've met Nathalie, right?"

"Your father's assistant."

"Yeah." Adrien looked back out the window at nothing in particular. "She's been sick lately, and Father is worried about her. Between us...I think he might have feelings for her."

Ladybug made a small choked noise. "You think?"

"I'm almost certain, actually. He's always doting on her, making sure she's all right, and touching her even when he doesn't need to, and she's the only person he lets in since Mom disappeared." He sighed, brows furrowing. "Even more than me. And now he's picking her up like  _ that… _ "

He glanced over at Ladybug and saw her looking back with furrowed brows and a small frown. She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do you mind it?"

"No!" Ladybug's eyes widened and Adrien realized that his vehemence had startled her. "No. She's already like part of the family, and I think she makes him happy again when nothing else has. But he was furious the one time I mentioned it."

Ladybug hummed and dropped her hand back to her side. For a minute or two, they stood in silence, looking out at the skyline shining almost uncomfortably bright in the late afternoon sun. With the momentary distraction of Adrien’s family life set aside, the current situation welled back up in his mind, a cut that started to bleed again as soon as the pressure was removed.

"What's the plan, my lady?"

"When can you get away tomorrow without being noticed?"

Adrien frowned. "Maybe six to seven? I'm supposed to be in here practicing piano then."

"Perfect." Ladybug smiled. "I'll come by and get you, and we'll go to Master Fu. We can get you another miraculous to use for the time being and figure out our next moves. And I can tell you who I am."

"But, Ladybug…"

"Yeah?"

Adrien swallowed. "Didn't Master Fu say that we would have to give up our miraculous if our identities were revealed, even to each other?" 

Silence. Ladybug stared out the window, squinting slightly against the sunset light, until Adrien wondered if she was going to answer at all.

"He did say that," she said at last. "He's old and extremely cautious. We've disagreed before over these sorts of things, and in the end, he’s always admitted that I was right. Whatever worries he has about us knowing each other's identities, it can't be as dangerous as benching both the city's heroes with Hawkmoth still out there."

That was enough to satisfy Adrien. He hummed in agreement. "You should probably go. I never know when Nathalie is going to walk in, and you must have places to be."

"Yeah..." Ladybug sighed. "I suppose I do." To Adrien's surprise, she leaned over and kissed his cheek before springing up into the open pane of the window. Her back was to the sun, her figure edged with orange light. "Try not to blame yourself too much for what happened today, Adrien. Hawkmoth hasn’t won yet.”


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriel brought toast and coffee up to Nathalie’s room the next morning, only to find her already awake, dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, twisting her damp hair up into its customary bun. When she saw the tray in his hands, she smiled slightly. “Thank you.”

The absence of any protest told him how weak she must still be feeling. He sat down next to her on the bed and held out the tray. “I hope you don’t intend to come in to the office today.”

“Of course I intend to.” She finished fussing with her hair and reached to take the tray from him. He noticed that her hands were shaking.

“I won’t hear of it.”

“My job still needs to be done, sir.”

“I can manage for a day.”

Nathalie took a sip of coffee; he could have sworn she was trying to hide a smile, though it hardly seemed like her to laugh at him. He supposed it  _ was _ a bit laughable to claim he could manage without her. It had in fact been a bit laughable for some time. But her health was the priority at the moment.

“While you’re here,” she said, “I did have something to ask you about.”

He noted with chagrin that her face had taken on an all too familiar determined look. “And what would that be?”

“Let me use the black cat miraculous.”

Gabriel frowned. “You’re still unwell.”

“Only because of my use of the peacock, which is now no longer necessary.” Nathalie picked up a piece of toast, eyed it, and set it back down on the plate. “It’s a great advantage to have two properly functioning miraculous at our disposal.”

“Please eat your breakfast, Nathalie.”

She gave him a tight smile that was clearly saying  _ don’t dodge the question _ . “It’s very thoughtful of you, but I’m not particularly hungry.”

“I can’t let you use the black cat.”

“Why not?” Her tone was mild, but the tilt of her chin and the slight lift of her eyebrows were a subtle challenge. 

He knew he hardly had a leg to stand on. Nathalie had already proven herself a match for the heroes even with a broken miraculous, and a miraculous that was meant to be used from the sidelines at that. Truth be told, there was something thrilling about the thought of seeing how she could fight with the black cat’s powers. And there was no reason to suppose that her illness wouldn’t improve if she set aside the peacock for good; at the very least, she likely wouldn’t get worse. Emilie had used the brooch all the way to the end, after all.

He emerged from his thoughts to find that Nathalie had taken a bite of toast; she looked like eating was making her feel ill. He decided to leave her be.

“I will consider it,” he said reluctantly, standing up. “Stay here, please. Work from your tablet if that will ease your mind, but try to rest.” 

She nodded and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. “I will. Good day, sir.”

“Good day, Nathalie.”

*****

Adrien paced his bedroom, glancing at the window every couple of steps. He wished Plagg were here; he could almost hear the kwaami teasing him.  _ Nervous to see your lady, huh, kid? At least you can stop moaning about not knowing who she is under the mask. _

“Adrien?”

He jumped and looked up at the window, where Ladybug was balanced in the open pane through which he used to leave as Chat Noir. She smiled and hopped down to the floor, landing lightly in front of him. “Are you ready to know who I am?”

“I” - Adrien faltered. “Aren’t you going to wait until we get to the guardian?”

“It’s too dangerous for me to get close to his location transformed,” she explained. “And I think it would be better to do this here as opposed to a back alley somewhere.”

She was talking faster and higher than usual. Adrien frowned. “Are you nervous, my lady?”

“What? No! I mean, maybe - a little bit?” Ladybug made a few vague gestures, and Adrien put his hands on her upper arms.

“Don’t worry, bugaboo. I still have your back, with masks or without. And to be honest…” He grinned. “I’ve had a suspicion since you said you knew me in civilian life, and this confirms it.”

“O - okay.” Ladybug looked past Adrien’s shoulder at the far wall. “Tikki, spots off.”

“I knew it.” Adrien stared at her, grinning, and then swept her up in a hug and spun her around. “I knew it was you, Marinette. It makes so much sense! You aren’t just our everyday Ladybug - you’re the  _ actual _ Ladybug!”

Marinette giggled nervously, her face completely red, as he set her feet back on the floor. “Not so loud, Adrien. We have to go, we only have an hour, remember?”

The words reminded Adrien sharply of what had brought them to this point, and the smile fell from his face. “Right, right. Lead on, my lady.”

*****

Marinette supposed it was lucky that the seriousness of the situation was keeping her mind too busy to act weird around Adrien. Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t be nervous around her crush once she realized she had seen him face-plant into the side of the Eiffel Tower. Either way, as they sat cross-legged on the floor of Master Fu’s latest hideaway - a small rented room above an antique shop - she was barely even tempted to glance to her left.

Master Fu didn’t look visibly upset. When they concluded their story, he sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time, looking from one teen to the other with an unreadable expression. Marinette clenched her hands around her teacup so tightly her fingers ached. 

“I am sure I do not to impress on either of you the seriousness of this situation.” Master Fu said at last.

Marinette swallowed and looked over at Adrien, who was staring at the floor, tracing the patterns of the wood grain with one finger. He shook his head silently at Master Fu’s words. Marinette reached over and rested a hand on his knee, getting a rueful smile in response.

“Marinette,” Master Fu went on, “I trust you remember what I said would have to happen if you ever discovered each other’s identities.”

Marinette looked down at her teacup and started to rattle off the argument she had prepared. “Yes, master, I remember. But doesn’t it seem more dangerous to lose your experienced heroes and train new ones, especially right now, when Hawkmoth has just gotten the upper hand? And now that we know each other’s identities, we can look out for each other in civilian life, too, and cover for each other if we need to. And” -

Master Fu held up a hand. “Yes, indeed. You make good points, Marinette, and your confidence has served better than my caution in the past.”

The two teenagers held their breath. Adrien placed a hand on top of Marinette’s and squeezed.

“I admit that I do not like it,” said Master Fu. “However, given the circumstances, it seems fair and prudent to give you both an opportunity to prove that you can still fill your roles effectively. Adrien, you will choose another miraculous for the time being.”

Adrien and Marinette glanced at each other as Master Fu stood and turned to retrieve the miracle box.  _ That was easy _ , Adrien mouthed. Marinette shrugged, then turned hurriedly back to Master Fu as he set the box down in front of them.

“Adrien Agreste,” he said, opening the lid. “Choose a miraculous to use for the protection of the people of Paris until such time as the black cat returns to you.”

Adrien looked into the box, then up at Marinette. “What do you think I should choose?”

Marinette scooted closer to him so that they could look into the box together. “I don’t know...the snake didn’t work out very well for you, did it?”

Adrien chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Not my proudest moment.”

Marinette’s fingers brushed over the fox pendant. Adrien made a doubtful sound. “No, that doesn’t feel right.”

“If I may make a suggestion?” said Master Fu, and tapped the bee miraculous.

Marinette made a face. “ _ Chloe’s _ miraculous?”

“Well, we already decided Chloe can’t use it anymore.” Adrien picked up the comb and turned it in his fingers as Marinette looked on in surprise. “It kind of makes sense, don’t you think? Venom isn’t like Cataclysm, but it’s closer to it than making illusions or shields, or changing time. It’s another attack thing. Maybe that would be easier to catch on to. And besides,” he added cheekily, “I look un- _ bee _ -lievably good in yellow.”

Marinette groaned. “That was  _ awful _ .”

*****

Gabriel put off returning to Nathalie’s room for as long as he could after he made up his mind; but as the evening drew on and color started to stain the sky outside the window, he finally made his way upstairs and tapped on the door of her room.

“Come in,” came a soft voice from inside.

He pushed open the door, and saw to his relief that Nathalie, though she had her tablet and was answering emails by the look of it, was at least in bed with the blankets pulled over her lap, resting as she had been told. This room, on the east side of the house, was already getting dim, and the lamp on the bedside table cast a warm light over Nathalie’s face.

Gabriel approached the bed, hands clasped behind his back. Nathalie coughed into her sleeve before shaking her head slightly and looking back up at him. She would never accept his worry about her welfare as a reason not to do something strategically useful, and he had accepted that he had no other reasons to give. That fact didn’t make him any less reluctant to do what he was going to do.

He pulled the ring out of his pocket and held it out to her.

Her eyebrows lifted, but she made no comment as she took it from his open palm and slipped it onto her finger. Green light engulfed her hand for a moment. Almost before it finished materializing into something small and black, it started shouting.

“Mayura? What did you do to my kid? Who do you think” - and the kwaami broke off, looking from Nathalie to Gabriel and back. “Oh no,” he said, in a much smaller voice. “Oh  _ no. _ ”

*****

Ladybug turned back to Adrien’s window, ready to leave, but he caught her arm. “Wait, I just thought of something. Maybe now that we know each other’s identities, you can explain…?” He faltered.

“What?”

“Last year, that one time...why did you suspect my father of being Hawkmoth?”


	3. Chapter 3

“That...makes a surprising amount of sense,” Adrien said. He and Ladybug - who remained transformed in case she needed to make a quick exit - were sitting on his bed, facing each other. He clasped his right hand around his left, making to fiddle with the ring that wasn’t there, before remembering and dropping his hands back to his knees instead. “I thought it was weird when Father told me you took the book. You don’t seem like the type to steal someone else’s stuff just to look at it.”

Ladybug chuckled. “Obviously I couldn’t tell you what was really going on, as Adrien. And I didn’t want to explain to Chat Noir because I didn’t want to give away that I knew you.” She pursed her lips. “It confused me why you fought me about it. But it’s okay, he got akumatized that same day, so we know it’s not him.”

Adrien sighed and flopped back onto the pillows. “Do we? I don’t think you just accidentally find something like that.”

He couldn’t see Ladybug’s face from this angle, but her voice was full of concern. “Why would Hawkmoth akumatize  _ himself _ ? We don’t even know if he  _ can _ do that.”

“To draw suspicion away from himself,” Adrien said, with a bit of an edge to his voice. “Conveniently, on the exact day that a piece of incriminating evidence walked away and he didn’t know who had it or could trace it back to him.” He rolled over onto his stomach, his face buried in his pillow.

“Adrien, we don’t know anything for sure.” Ladybug sighed, and the bed creaked as she moved to lie down next to him. “Maybe Master Fu knows if it’s possible for the butterfly holder to akumatize himself. We can go back some time and ask.”

He turned his head so he could see her, finding her deep blue eyes closer than he expected to his own. “Mayura can do it. She must have yesterday, to make the fake Ladybug. And so did Master Fu when he used the peacock and got his temple destroyed.”

“But that doesn’t mean Hawkmoth can. And even if he can, we don’t know that that’s what happened with your father. Hawkmoth hasn’t used the enhancement spells, or unifying his two miraculous, and those are both in the grimoire. He hasn’t shown evidence that he has it.”

Adrien sat up, and so did Ladybug. For the second time in as many days, he found her level-headed manner reassuring him. “You’re right, m’lady. We don’t need to jump to conclusions.”

She smiled. “Exactly. One problem at a time. I should go now before my parents wonder, but I’ll see you tomorrow in school.”

The glow of her assurances lasted until her small figure vanished over the rooftops; then it started to fade. She was right that the book didn’t prove anything. But it was the only lead they had on Hawkmoth, and it led straight to Adrien’s home, no matter what they said about other possible explanations. He went to the window and stared out of it, watching the lights come on in windows and along streets as it got dark. For a moment he wanted to transform and go out for a run across the city, but he had been putting off the moment of meeting his new kwaami, and didn’t feel up to it now. Instead, he stood, and watched, and listened to the bells of a nearby church chime each quarter-hour as the time passed.

*****

“What’s your name?” Nathalie asked the cat kwaami.

In response, he crossed his arms and laid his ears back. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”

Nathalie glared. “I’m your holder now, like it or not. Tell me your name.”

“Plagg,” he said sullenly.

“And your transformation phrases?”

Plagg stared silently back at her.

Nathalie clenched her hands around bunches of the comforter and took a deep breath. “I order you to tell me your transformation phrases. Truthfully.” She didn’t even know if kwaamis could lie in response to a direct command, but it seemed a precaution worth taking.

“‘Claws out’ and ‘claws in,’” said Plagg with obvious reluctance.

Gabriel, who had perched on the edge of the bed to watch the conversation, chuckled humorlessly. “This one isn’t going to make it easy for you.”

“I wish I had Duusu back.”

“You know why you can’t.”

With a sigh, Nathalie looked back at her new kwaami, and made an effort to keep the frustration out of her voice. “What do you like to eat, Plagg?”

The question seemed to soften his indignation, if only slightly. “Cheese. Preferably Camembert.”

“Camembert?” Nathalie glanced at Gabriel. “That seems odd. What does Nooroo eat?”

“Fruit, mostly,” Gabriel said. “Duusu?”

“Coffee.”

Gabriel laughed. “I suppose that worked out well, then.”

Plagg made a huffing noise, and they looked back at him. The mention of his fellow kwaamis appeared to have put him out of temper again. “Lucky you feed them at all.”

“We’re not monsters,” Nathalie retorted.

“Really? Then stop attacking on vulnerable people for your own ends!”

That was the last straw for Nathalie. “Get back in the ring. Now.”

Plagg made a noise that sounded like a hiss as he was sucked into the jewel on Nathalie’s hand. The two humans were left sitting in silence. Nathalie realized it had gotten quite dark outside, leaving the room mostly in shadow, with only the lamp casting a glow around the bed. She climbed out of bed on the opposite side from where Gabriel was sitting and went to close the curtains. 

“Plagg is going to be a delight to work with, I can already tell,” she remarked as she came back. Gabriel nodded. To her surprise, he pulled his feet up onto the bed, and she settled next to him, on top of the blankets.

Unsure what to do with herself, she started turning the ring on her finger. “What do you suppose the heroes’ next move is going to be? Will they go to the guardian and get another miraculous for the boy?”

“I imagine so.” Gabriel was looking straight ahead of him, at some indefinite point in the shadows on the far side of the room. “From what I gather, no one managed to see his face; they have no reason to remove him from the fight.”

Nathalie, who had been watching Gabriel’s profile, looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“No!” he said loudly, making her flinch, then lowered his voice again as he went on. “This was an enormous success, and I owe it entirely to you.”

He was looking back when she glanced up at him, and she lowered her eyes again immediately, feeling her cheeks turn warm. “I’m glad to have been of use.”

Somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock began to chime eight. Gabriel made a noise of disapproval. “I didn’t realize it was so late. You may of course go home now, if you like. Although I would prefer it if you stayed here another night.”

“Since I’m already here, I may as well stay,” Nathalie replied, trying to shake off the hope that Gabriel might stay with her for a while if she did. She was already beginning to feel drowsy, and rested her head back on the pillows. 

Gabriel shifted and the glint of lamplight on silver drew her eyes to his left hand. She gestured at it. “Is that Emilie’s ring? I thought Felix stole yours.”

“It is Emilie’s.” He touched it lightly with his other hand. 

“I’m surprised it fits you.”

“There was always something about these rings,” he said pensively. “There was a bit of a family legend surrounding them; Emilie mentioned it a few times. They were supposed to be enchanted. I never gave much credence to it, but I did notice that they seemed to shift to fit the person wearing them.”

Nathalie hummed in interest. “Well, magical jewelry is hardly a strange idea to us now. Did Emilie ever explain further about the legend?”

“No,” he said stiffly. “There were - many things she never told me.”

It was the closest he had come to speaking ill of his wife since her death, at least in Nathalie’s hearing, and she frowned in the direction of the bedpost, unsure how to respond. After a period of silence, Gabriel added: “Her parents wanted to give the rings to the first of the girls who got married. She joked that she married me, as the first person to court her seriously, just to get them instead of her sister.”

His voice gave nothing away; it was less cold than a moment before, but certainly not the usual tone of someone relaying a joke. The statement didn’t seem funny at all to Nathalie, though it might just have been that Gabriel said it so flatly. She found herself at a loss for words once again.

Gabriel made a sound that might have been a sigh. The clock chimed the quarter of the hour. The silence rested heavily on Nathalie’s ears. Her eyelids began to flutter, and after a time she stopped bothering to resist. By the time her head lolled to the side and landed on Gabriel’s shoulder, she was too much asleep to notice, let alone change position. Nor did she feel him rest his head against hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, the first couple chapters were a bit of a stumbling start, but I did some actual planning today and I think I have more of a handle now on where this story is going. (Even if it's gotten more complicated and larger in scope than I intended.) Buckle up, it's going to be a ride.


	4. Chapter 4

As Nathalie put on her makeup, she could see Plagg in the mirror, hovering near the corner of the ceiling. He hadn’t said a word to her yet that morning, only stared with his big reflective eyes. Nathalie pursed her lips as she started to apply mascara. It was only fair for him to be disgruntled with her; she had, after all, forced him into the ring and left him there overnight, forgetting about it until long after she woke up, on top of what she had already done in taking him from his last holder.

At the very least, she was grateful that he was no longer actively antagonizing her, even if the silent sulking was a bit unsettling. She was in a good mood, having woken up to find that though Gabriel had left at some point during the night, he had tucked her into bed and folded her glasses on the nightstand next to a glass of water. Perhaps Plagg could be convinced to come around.

“Plagg,” she said, leaning back from the mirror and smoothing down her sweater, “I’m going to take you down to the kitchen and get you some camembert before work. There should be some in the refrigerator. My employer’s son is fond of it.”

The kwaami continued to glare in the mirror. Nathalie reached up to fuss at her hair. “Listen,” she went on. “We aren’t just doing this for power.”

Plagg uncrossed his arms and she saw his ears stand up. Ah, now he was listening.

“Hawkmoth lost his wife a little over a year ago,” she said, adjusting a bobby pin. “He wants to get her back. He needs her, and he’s sure that their son needs her, too. He’s convinced that he isn’t able to be a good parent to him.”

She opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the cooler air of the bedroom, with a slight shiver. A glance over her shoulder told her that Plagg was following. There were a few moments of silence as she slipped on her blazer and buttoned it.

Finally, Plagg’s curiosity got the better of him. “And why do you help him?”

“Because I want him happy again.” A scrap of paper on the nightstand drew her attention, and she went to pick it up.  _ Goodnight, _ it said simply in Gabriel’s handwriting. She smiled and tucked it into her pocket, then turned back to Plagg. “I don’t expect you to support us, or trust us, at least not immediately. So I’m afraid I need to order you to stay hidden from anyone who doesn’t know about you, and not to give away any information about either me or Hawkmoth - our location, identity, motivations, or plans.”

Plagg’s eyes narrowed. Nathalie could tell he resented the command, but even if he was showing a bit more willingness to listen to her, she wasn’t prepared to trust in his goodwill. “One more thing,” she said, balancing herself with a hand on the bedpost as she stepped into her shoes. “Tell me who your last holder was.”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Plagg snapped, last night’s hostility returning to his voice. “Kwaamis are bound not to reveal the identities of any of their holders to anyone who doesn’t already know.”

Nathalie sighed. She had suspected as much. “Of course. Let’s go get you some food.”

*****

When Nathalie walked into the atelier (with Plagg floating by her shoulder, somewhat pacified by a large wedge of Adrien’s camembert), Gabriel was already there, standing at his podium. Even from the door Nathalie could see that he looked tired. He glanced up when she entered. “Ah, Nathalie. Are you feeling better this morning?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.” She started to turn away toward her desk, her mind already racing ahead to the paperwork she needed to catch up on, but Gabriel’s voice stopped her in place.

“I intend to create an akuma today, if the opportunity arises. The sooner we can draw the heroes back into the open and find out how they stand now, the better. We don’t want to give the boy more time than necessary to get accustomed to his new powers.”

“Of course,” Nathalie said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “It will give me an opportunity to test the black cat as well.” Next to her ear, Plagg gave a frustrated huff.

Gabriel frowned. “I would rather you not go out in the field just yet.”

“Why not?” she asked, turning to face him. “I’ve already mostly recovered from two days ago.”

“Because…” Gabriel seemed to fumble with his words, then closed his eyes for a moment, an expression that meant conceding defeat. “Very well, go, but be careful. Stay away from the thick of the fight if you can.”

Nathalie gave a single nod and turned back to her desk. “Let me know when it’s time, sir.”

*****

“How do I look?” Adrien asked, striking a pose with one hand on his hip. Ladybug rolled her eyes.

“Well enough to fight an akuma, which is what we’re here to do.” She gestured in the direction of the shrieks and metallic clangs they could hear from a few streets away. “Come on.”

The pair of them took off, dashing across the roofs in the direction of the noise. “What should I call you?” Ladybug shouted to her partner over the noise of the wind in their ears and the approaching fight.

“Yellowjacket!” he called back, and leapt with her off the edge of a building, both of them throwing their yo-yos toward the row of houses across the street. Ladybug landed and instantly had her yo-yo back in her hand for another jump. Yellowjacket was less lucky; he grunted in pain as his left side slammed into the chimney his own weapon had wrapped around.

“M’fine,” he called, only stumbling for a step before he was at Ladybug’s side again. But when she glanced sideways at him, she saw a slight frown on his face, replacing the look of playful confidence he usually wore just before a fight.

They skidded to a stop high above a narrow residential street. Gleaming metal cages trapped every person on the sidewalks below, and many had encased cars as well. It only took a moment to find the source of the chaos in a young woman with silver hair floating out around her as though she were underwater, and her body wrapped in chains. 

Ladybug bit her lip and looked over at Yellowjacket. “She’s trapping people.”

“Yeah.” He hung onto a television antenna and leaned out to get a better look. Just at that moment, a man in one of the few untrapped cars crawled out of it on the opposite side from the akuma, clearly hoping to make a getaway without her noticing. He wasn’t so lucky. As soon as the akuma spotted him, one of the chains wrapped around her lashed out like a long tentacle and struck him in the shoulder. With a flash of light, a cage formed around him. “It’s the chains,” Yellowjacket observed, still looking down into the street. “They’re her weapon.”

“Um, Yellowjacket?” said Ladybug. “I think we have another problem.”

He looked where she was pointing, at a rooftop across the street, and his heart dropped. A female figure in black stood looking back at them. The buildings weren’t far apart, letting the heroes make her out clearly. Her suit, while still clearly made for fighting, had detailing that suggested business dress - a blazer, trousers and black flats. She had square glasses with lenses tinted the green of Chat Noir’s eyes, and a long braid of black hair shot through with streaks of the same green. She twirled a baton in her left hand.

Yellowjacket’s hands curled into fists and he said a word that Ladybug was sure Gabriel Agreste would not have approved of. “Mayura is using  _ my _ miraculous! She has Plagg!” He tensed as if he were about to leap at the woman, but Ladybug placed a warning hand on his arm.

“Steady, bug boy,” she said quietly. “We need a plan.”

*****

Nathalie couldn’t resist a smirk at the boy’s indignation. Giving the baton a final flourishing spin, she raised it to her mouth. “Hawkmoth?”

“Madame Malheur.” They had chosen her new alias together before she left the lair.  _ Misfortune. _ The name sounded dignified to her ears, and it suited her well.

“The boy is using the bee miraculous,” she said softly, keeping her eyes fixed on the heroes in anticipation of an attack. His suit had less yellow and more black than Miss Bourgeois’, and the costume included a black newsboy cap (apparently in rebellion against having to wear a hair comb), but the hat still had antennae on it and he held the characteristic striped yo-yo. It was unmistakable.

“Interesting choice,” Hawkmoth said. “Very interesting. They haven’t engaged the akuma yet?”

“Not yet. But any moment. I believe my appearance threw them off.”

“Good, good. Now, remember, stay out of harm’s way unless it is” -

Madame Malheur hung up, cutting off the word “necessary.” At the moment she felt she could do anything. It was easy to tell that while the peacock had been made to work from the sidelines, the cat was meant for a fight. Her senses felt unnaturally sharp, her head clearer than it had been for months, her muscles stronger than they had probably ever been. These children had barely beaten her in her weakened state, and now they were the weakened ones - she had seen the boy crash into a chimney on his way here. Maybe it wasn’t  _ necessary _ for her to fight, but the chance was too good to pass up.

When the heroes leapt down into the street after the akuma, she followed without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Blaize_Night for suggesting the name "Madame Malheur," and to the individual going by "Mayura's Dumb Wife" on the Gabenath Discord for suggesting "Yellowjacket." 
> 
> The next chapter with the actual fight scene should be out soon, hopefully; it was supposed to be part of this chapter, so it's already planned, at least as much as I plan anything.


	5. Chapter 5

Madame Malheur was even more magnificent than Hawkmoth had imagined she would be.

Despite helping her choose a name, he hadn’t seen her in costume - she had left in civilian form to put some distance between her and the mansion before transforming. He had hoped not to see her, since it would mean she had gotten mixed up in the fight. When she dropped from the rooftops directly in front of the akuma, landing far too lightly and precisely to have plummeted from four stories up, he stopped breathing.

Within seconds it became clear that the heroes were outmatched. Looking through the akuma’s eyes, Hawkmoth couldn’t see the boy well, but the muscle memory that had made him such an effective fighter with his baton seemed to be getting in his way; he reacted as though he was holding it, and his yo-yo swung erratically, tangling with his own feet as often as it got near Madame Malheur. Ladybug, fighting back-to-back with him, had her hands full with dodging the chains that lashed at her over and over. Occasionally she would throw the barest glance over her shoulder, but she never had the space to do more.

And Madame Malheur...she kept them both pinned between herself, the akuma and a stone facade, constricting the space they had to maneuver. Hawkmoth had seen her fight before, of course, both as Mayura and as Nathalie, and been suitably impressed. Yet Madame Malheur was on another level entirely. She moved so fast he could barely follow, landing blows too rapidly to let the boy gather his wits, with a smirk on her lips all the while. Her braid swung behind her and Hawkmoth caught himself wondering if her hair was really that long.

The fight went on for one minute, two minutes, without much movement, and Hawkmoth could see the heroes panting, beginning to slow down noticeably. It was a crude strategy, but an effective one. Madame Malheur started to mix up her technique - a knee to the gut, a foot hooked round the boy’s ankle to unbalance him, allowing him to  _ almost _ land a blow before deflecting at the last instant. Hawkmoth couldn’t quite hear, but it looked like she laughed.

Chat Noir’s suave demeanor may have been catlike, but there was something equally catlike about this predatorial laughter. It sent a shiver down Hawkmoth’s spine. 

With his eyes focused on Madame Malheur, he missed the exact moment that Ladybug reacted a little too slowly, but he saw the cage materialize around the two heroes. Over their heads, through the bars, he saw Madame Malheur, brushing a hand over her forehead the way she would as Nathalie to smooth the one strand that always hung askew. She looked over and met the akuma’s eyes, and through them his, and raised one eyebrow.

*****

Ladybug opened her mouth to tell her partner to cataclysm the bars; then she bit down on the words. They pressed close against each other in the center of the cage, aware that the enemy on either side could reach in for them at any moment. Yellowjacket’s hand found hers and he gave a quick squeeze before letting go.

Mayura - or whatever her name was now - took a step closer to the bars. She held her hands behind her back in a non-threatening posture, but Ladybug could tell she was drawn taut, ready to act. “Ladybug,” she said evenly. “Hawkmoth and I have the advantage now. Surrender, and this can all end cleanly.”

Before Ladybug could react, Yellowjacket piped up from beside her. “Give me back Plagg, you - you” -

She chuckled. “No worries. Your kwaami is in capable hands. Though, I must say, he’s much more disagreeable than Duusu.”

“Listen, Mayura,” Ladybug said.

“It’s Madame Malheur. And unless your next words are ‘I surrender,’ I’m afraid I’m not interested in listening.”

“Actually, I just wanted to remind you that we have one more trick up our sleeve,” said Ladybug, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. “Lucky Charm!” 

Her yo-yo flew up between the bars above her head, and a small paper tube dropped into her hands. A firecracker. She looked at it for a moment, then leaned in to whisper the plan in Yellowjacket’s ear. He nodded. 

“Sorry to disappoint you, but you haven’t caught these mice.” 

An explosion went off behind them, and behind the akuma, where Yellowjacket had thrown the firecracker as Ladybug spoke. The heroes spun round as the akuma turned to look behind her; two yo-yos caught her and dragged her against the bars, within reach of Yellowjacket’s Venom; and in moments her necklace had been seized and broken, and it was over. Neither of the heroes saw Madame Malheur disappear.

*****

“I haven’t heard from Nathalie,” Adrien said, looking down at the phone in his hand. “That’s weird. Normally she’s extra careful about where I am during an attack.”

Marinette gave a thoughtful hum and picked up another pastry from the plate her mother had brought and left on the floor between them. “I wouldn’t worry yet. Now, you said you wanted to talk about something?”

Adrien shifted uneasily, looking at the floor. “Yeah. Uh...I was wondering if, maybe it would better if, you brought one of the temporary heroes on full time instead of me?”

“What?” Marinette coughed as pastry crumbs scratched the back of her throat. “Adrien, what are you talking about?”

He still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Look, today was...pretty bad. I didn’t catch on to the bee as fast as I should have. And Madame Malheur, she’s scary.”

Marinette stared. “Yeah, she is. And that’s why I need you here. You’re still my partner. You and me against the world, remember?”

“I guess,” Adrien said, with a faltering smile, and picked up another pastry.

“Seriously. You just need a little practice. Remember how well  _ I _ used my yo-yo the first time?”

That coaxed a laugh from the blond boy, and Marinette found herself laughing too, harder and harder, until they were leaning against each other shaking and gulping for air; the comment hadn’t really been that funny, but it served to vent the stress of the last few days in a fit of hysterics that left them lightheaded. They were interrupted at length by Adrien’s phone ringing.

“Yeah?” he said. “Hi, Nathalie. Yes, I’m still at the bakery. Yes. Of course. Nathalie, are you okay? Okay, it’s just it sounded like you were wheezing. Right. See you soon.”

“Time to go?” Marinette asked when he hung up.

“Yeah. The gorilla is coming to pick me up.”

“Well,” Marinette said mischievously, “I guess it’s time to eat as many of these pastries as we can before you have to leave.”

*****

Nathalie landed in a crouch in an alleyway near the Agreste mansion. She held her breath as she straightened, instinctively placing a hand on the wall next to her for support, though she felt no real need for it. A car honked its horn nearby, making her jump. She swallowed hard.

It took courage to detransform, every time. She told herself that this miraculous wasn’t broken, that it wouldn’t hurt her, but her fingers still dug into the ridges of the brick as she whispered “Plagg, claws in.”

Light washed over her and she stood. One breath, two breaths, three breaths. Nathalie smiled, then found herself stifling a giggle. She took another breath, a long, deep, deliberate one, feeling the air fill her lungs up smoothly. She stretched her arms above her head. Stood up on tiptoe, balancing, her legs holding her weight.

Plagg sat in midair in front of her with his arms crossed, looking decidedly unimpressed with the display. He seemed to have retreated into his sulking mood. Catching sight of him brought Nathalie back to reality, and she moved to the end of the alley and waited for a moment when no one was looking to step out onto the sidewalk and set off for the mansion.

Gabriel was waiting in the atelier. As soon as she opened the door, he hurried over to her and seized her hands in his. His eyes were wide. “Nathalie. You were phenomenal.”

She frowned and gave his hands a gentle squeeze. “Ladybug outsmarted us again.”

“It’s only a matter of time. They struggled badly. And I think, as long as the boy sees you holding his miraculous, his anger will be a distraction.”

Nathalie was used to the bouts of intensity that sometimes broke Gabriel’s cold demeanor, but this was a bit different. It wasn’t the frantic, wild, slightly unstable intensity that being Hawkmoth usually brought on, nor the grief-inflected fury he occasionally directed at Adrien.  _ What _ was different, exactly, Nathalie couldn’t place.

She opened her mouth to reply, and then something burst searing in her chest and she was on her knees, scrabbling at the front of her blazer, tears welling in her eyes. The pain was gone as quickly as it had come. Gabriel was on his knees beside her, pulling her close, and after a moment she became aware of him saying her name over and over. She looked up and tried to smile to let him know that the fit, whatever it had been, was over.

“What happened?” he asked, sounding uncharacteristically near panic. 

She struggled to organize her thoughts, and realized there was a whistle in her lungs that hadn’t been there a moment before. “It’s - it’s nothing,” she managed. “I’m fine.” 

She already felt almost fine again, other than the slight wheeze. Whatever had just happened to her had been incredibly sudden compared to her usual symptoms. But as they stood again, it was clear Gabriel wasn’t convinced. Neither was Nathalie. She could hardly feel that this was a sign of improvement.

“This is an improvement,” she said. “Just a few seconds, compared to what the peacock caused. It will only get better, I’m certain of it.”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “You don’t have to continue going out.”

“I want to.” A thought occurred to her, and she reached for her phone. “I need to check on Adrien; he was at his fencing lesson.”

To her relief, Gabriel turned away, taking the hint that the conversation was at a close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel a bit "meh" about this chapter, but I'm VERY EXCITED for the next one, so bear with me!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I love that so many comments have mentioned Plagg. The position I've put him in is one of the most interesting parts of this story to me, so I'm really glad it's interesting to others as well!

That evening, Adrien got a text from Marinette.  **Hey there, want to get in some practice with your yo-yo tricks?**

**Yeah, absolutely!**

**Great! Italian place down the street from ur house, 10 min?**

**Works for me, see u soon Maribug <3**

**Don’t call me Maribug, lol**

Ten minutes later, the two teens landed on the restaurant roof at almost the same moment, shared a hug in greeting, and took off across the city. It was the blue hour between sunset and dark, when the lights in shop and home windows begin to stand out in the dimness. Yellowjacket found himself catching onto his yo-yo much faster with the pressure off. Before long, he was swinging and leaping almost as smoothly as Ladybug. 

Presently, she threw a sly look over her shoulder at him. “Ready to try something more exciting, bug boy?”

“Absolutely, m’lady.”

Ladybug grinned as she picked up her pace. Yellowjacket, racing along a half-step behind and beside her, looked ahead and realized that the row of buildings they were on was about to end, and past the edge was the broad lawn surrounding the Eiffel Tower.

He barely had time to process it before they were leaping into thin air, and he flung out his yo-yo reflexively, feeling that the tower was much too far...but then the yo-yo caught somewhere out of sight, and he and Ladybug were soaring across the open space, dropping until their feet nearly touched the ground and then swinging up in a dizzying arc. The city lights blurred in Yellowjacket’s vision, and then his feet hit something hard, and he steadied himself and blinked. They were standing on a platform halfway up the tower, looking out on the lighted city and a sky now almost completely dark.

“Woah,” he managed.

Ladybug laughed brightly. “See? I told you you would get the hang of it.”

Her face was close to his, and his stomach fluttered with something completely unrelated to the leap they had just made. It was easy, now, to recognize Marinette’s eyes behind Ladybug’s mask. With everything else that had happened, he hadn’t paused to think about whether knowing each other’s identities would change anything for them, but...wow. 

Not that this was the time to be thinking about anything of the sort.

“Let’s rest here for a minute before we go back,” Ladybug said, and sat down on the edge of the platform, legs dangling. Yellowjacket sat next to her. After a moment, she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. 

Silence fell. The sounds of traffic still drifted up from the streets, of course, but they only reached him distantly. He closed his eyes and tried to forget what was going on.

He couldn’t forget. Hawkmoth and Madame Malheur were somewhere in the city, and they were halfway to getting whatever it was they wanted to use the miraculous for. And their only lead on Hawkmoth still pointed to his father. His mind wanted to shrink away from the idea, like a cat recoiling from being touched with a wet hand, but he couldn’t entirely dismiss it. 

But Ladybug had promised they would look into it more, and sitting there with her head on his shoulder, listening to her slow breathing, he couldn’t bring himself to disturb her. So he said nothing.

*****

Elsewhere in Paris, another miraculous holder was also enjoying the view of the city at night, but she was looking from a fourth-story apartment window instead of the Eiffel Tower, and she was alone. Nathalie - ignoring her employer’s mute concern - had returned to her own home, a ten-minute walk from the Agreste mansion. The first thing she had one was go round and close the curtains on all the windows, but she stopped at the last one, which overlooked the street, and leaned on the sill to look outside. There was too much light pollution to see the stars, but if she moved all the way to the left side of the window, she could just get a glimpse of the crescent moon around the frame.

After a minute or two, she stepped back and closed the curtains. Plagg had made himself comfortable on the back of the couch. “You know,” she joked, “this apartment doesn’t allow pets.”

Plagg said nothing in response, only stared at her with those uncanny, reflective green eyes. Nathalie shrugged and sat down on the opposite end of the couch with one foot tucked underneath her.

Her mind began to wander, jumping from the kwaami beside her, to his last holder (whoever that had been), to the ring on her finger, and Emilie in her coffin, and the trip to Tibet, and then to the year before that trip when Emilie had told her about these legendary jewels that she wanted to go and find.

She had known Nathalie was too pragmatic to accept the notion of magic jewelry without any proof, so she had only talked about them as items of historical importance, at first - and Nathalie had wondered, because Emilie wasn’t usually the type to look back even a day, let alone take an interest in ancient artifacts. It had taken a year off Nathalie’s life when she first saw Duusu materialize out of the peacock brooch. And when Emilie had transformed. Nathalie could still practically feel the way her limbs had gone weak with the shock of it.

Emilie’s hair had stayed blonde, Nathalie remembered, and her skin pale, and she had worn a deep blue domino mask. Nathalie didn’t know whether her own appearance as Mayura was simply because she was a different person, or whether the worsening damage to the miraculous had something to do with it, because she never got to see Emilie transform again after that first time. If she ever asked about Emilie’s use of the brooch, she would get a coy grin and the words “I’m having adventures” in response. Eventually she didn’t bother to ask.

She yawned, and came back to the present with the realization of how tired she was. A glance to the side told her that Plagg was already sleeping. She got up from the couch, swaying slightly as colored sparks filled her vision and then receded -  _ I must be more tired than I thought _ \- and headed for her bedroom.

Time passed, and the light under the bedroom door went out. More time passed - an hour, then two - and the noises of tossing and turning gradually, finally gave way to stillness. Plagg, who had been watching through slitted eyes, stirred, stretched, gave one last wary look at Nathalie’s bedroom door, and phased through the outside wall.

*****

Plagg nudged with his paw at Adrien’s cheek, trying not to shake. It had been less than three days, the room and Adrien were just as he had left them, and yet the scene felt alien given how much had changed. “Hey. Hey, kid. Wake up. Please?”

Adrien groaned and reached up to bat sluggishly at the air by his face. “Cmon, Nathalie, ‘s not time to wake up yet.”

Plagg winced at the mention of his new holder. Poor kid. For a moment he was glad that Nathalie’s orders gave him an airtight excuse not to tell Adrien the truth. “Adrien, it’s me.”

“Wait - Plagg?” Adrien’s eyes opened and he shook his head. “What? I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

“No, I’m really here. I snuck away to visit you.”

“Oh gosh.” It was hard to tell in the dark, even with cat eyes, but it looked like Adrien might be tearing up.

“I’m here, kid,” Plagg repeated. “I can’t stay long but I wanted to check.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Adrien’s voice was getting less slurred as he came fully awake, and he sat up in bed. “Are you okay? Is Madame Malheur treating you badly?”

Plagg hesitated. “I’m fine. She’s got a harder crust than your dad, and only has a soft spot for Hawkmoth and” - his voice caught slightly - “one other person. But she isn’t cruel.”

“I bet you can’t tell me who she is?”

“No,” said Plagg, shaking his head.  _ Not that you want to know, really. _ “No kwaami can give away the identity of their holder. And Madame Malheur was smart - she swore me to secrecy about Hawkmoth, too, and basically anything that could give a hint about who they are or why they’re doing it.” Nathalie’s words echoed in his head:  _ He needs her, and he’s sure that their son needs her, too. He’s convinced that he isn’t able to be a good parent to him. _ “I’d tell you if I could,” he said, not sure if it was the truth.

Adrien frowned and rubbed his eyes. “But she’s got to be close if you were able to get here. Is there anything you  _ can _ tell me?”

His tone was full of frustration. Plagg couldn’t blame him. He would bet that after losing his miraculous, Adrien wanted to prove himself by going to Ladybug with some big secret about their enemies.

“Not much,” he said apologetically. “She’s clever, she closed all the loopholes. Except for ordering me not to visit you, of course. Definitely the smart one. I’d bet a whole wheel of Camembert that all their best plans were hers. Hawkmoth is a lot more impulsive; she’s the one to be scared of.”

He faltered as he said it, but Nathalie didn’t know that she loved her opponent, she only knew determination, and he needed to make sure Adrien stayed safe.

“I hope we can beat them,” said Adrien with a sigh. 

“Hey. Don’t say stuff like that. You and your lady are gonna do just fine.” 

There was a short silence. “Ladybug and I revealed our identities,” Adrien said finally. “Or, well, she revealed hers. I...you know.”

Plagg snorted. “About time.”

“You must have known who she was after we swapped that one time.”

“Actually, way before that.”

“And you never even gave me a hint? Traitor.”

Plagg smirked, though he knew Adrien, with his flimsy human eyes, probably couldn’t make it out in the darkness of the room. Then he remembered the risk he was taking to be here, and that he probably shouldn’t push his luck with banter, much as he wanted to. “Look, I should go. If she wakes up and finds me gone then I’ll never get the chance to sneak away again.”

The humor melted off of Adrien’s face, replaced by a forlorn expression. “Do you really have to leave?”

“I’ll try to come back. Until then...take care of yourself.”

Adrien managed a smile. “You too, Plagg. We’re trying to fix this, I promise.”

Plagg was already drifting away toward the window, but he turned to throw one last quip at Adrien. “Do or do not, there is no try.”

“Since when do you watch Star Wars?”

“I’m full of surprises,” Plagg laughed. “Bye, Adrien.”

“Bye, Plagg.”

The kwaami glanced behind him at the dim shape of his former holder settling back down in bed and pulling the blankets up to his neck, and wished there was a way for this to end without anyone getting hurt, though he knew there wasn’t. He phased through the window and flew, high above the streets, back in the direction of Nathalie’s apartment.


	7. Chapter 7

A knock came on the door, and Adrien looked up from his bed, where he was lying in a nest of blankets, churned up by his tossing and turning during the night. His thoughts about Hawkmoth and Madame Malheur, wandering foggy and unfocused through his exhaustion, had kept him awake for ages after Plagg left, but it was Saturday, so he was  _ supposed _ to be able to sleep in. "What?" he called, sounding grouchier than he meant to.

The door opened, and Nathalie's face appeared. "Good morning, Adrien."

Adrien sat up and blinked, trying to look more awake and aware than he felt. "I thought I didn't have to be anywhere today."

"You don't." Nathalie sat on the edge of the bed. "It's almost ten and no one has seen you yet. I wanted to check and make sure you weren't ill."

"I just didn't sleep well last night." Adrien sat up and hugged his knees to his chest. Nathalie looked back at him silently, her face a calm invitation to elaborate if he chose. He knew he couldn't tell her what was going on, but…

"I'm working on a...a group project. At school. And I feel like I'm not contributing as much as the other members. Like I'm going to mess things up for everyone."

Nathalie frowned. "Is it a subject I can help you with?"

"No, no, it's just…" Adrien didn't know what else to say. "I don't know. It just feels like…" he trailed off. 

Nathalie reached over and rested a hand on his shoulder. The tight headachy feeling of oncoming tears wrapped around Adrien's temples, and he blinked and looked down at the blankets. Then, without thinking about it, he scooted over and wrapped his arms around Nathalie.

She stiffened in surprise, but relaxed and hugged him back the next moment before he could pull away and apologize. "It's all right, Adrien," she murmured, sounding uncertain.

Adrien felt the tears well up and spill over onto the pristine shoulder of Nathalie's blazer, and he knew he should be sorry, but he couldn't stand to end the rare, unexpected moment of physical contact, so he tightened his grip and let the tears fall.

*****

Nathalie didn't know how long they sat there, but it must have been long enough that her employer missed her, because she heard footsteps out in the hall, and them Gabriel himself appeared, wearing his usual look of vague disdain. It shifted a fraction to concern when he took in the scene in front of him. He opened his mouth, but Nathalie gave him a sharp look, and he closed it again and approached the bed. 

As he sat down on the other side of Adrien, Nathalie held the boy a little tighter, bracing herself for whatever well-meant but hopelessly tone-deaf thing he was about to say. Adrien lifted his head from Nathalie’s shoulder and looked round. “Father?”

Gabriel made a stiff attempt at a comforting smile; then he leaned in and hugged his son. Tall and lanky as he was, his arms reached all the way around Adrien and his hands settled on Nathalie’s back. The two adult’s foreheads came close to resting against each other over top of Adrien’s head. Nathalie relaxed and allowed herself a smile. 

*****

Unfortunately, the day that had started off so well didn’t continue that way. Nathalie left father and son to their own devices after a time and returned to the atelier to finish off the few tasks that had brought her in on a Saturday, expecting to be done and on her way back to her apartment within the hour. That would have been the case if her computer, which was less than a year old, hadn’t frozen twice in a row, and if her mug hadn’t tipped over and spilled coffee on a stack of papers without her even touching it. As she was mopping up the coffee with a handful of tissues, Plagg - who had been poking around the room, ignoring her until that exact moment - decided to ask for camembert.

“In a minute,” she snapped, throwing the sodden tissues in the trash can and pulling another handful from the box. “Can’t you wait until we get home? I don’t want to keep stealing Adrien’s.”

Plagg huffed and folded his arms. “But I’m hungry  _ now _ .” 

Nathalie didn’t know if Plagg was really that spoiled, or if he was just deliberately antagonizing her, but she was sure that he wouldn’t shut up until he got his way. And there was nothing further she could do to save the documents, anyway. She frowned at him. “Fine.”

Adrien’s camembert was buried all the way at the back of the fridge, and when Nathalie pulled it out, it was spotted with orange mold that hadn’t been there a few days ago. She made a mental note to talk to Adrien about keeping a better eye on his perishable food. “Guess you’re waiting after all,” she said to Plagg.

The kwaami looked appraisingly at the cheese in her hands, then took a huge bite out of it. “It’s not so bad,” he said in response to Nathalie’s wrinkled nose - or at least, that was what she  _ thought _ he said, but the mouthful of cheese made it difficult to tell. He swallowed. “Besides, I’m immortal. A few germs don’t bother me.”

Nathalie closed her eyes and leaned her head against the refrigerator door.

*****

**I thought maybe today would be good to go ask about the thing, u free?**

Marinette only had to wait a minute before her phone pinged with a response.  **Sorry, my father asked to do lunch w me today, wouldn’t want to miss it!**

She grinned as she typed a response.  **That’s great, I’m happy for u! Another day then?**

Adrien’s typing bubbles popped up immediately, and lasted long enough that she started to wonder. Finally, his reply came through.  **Go without me and tell me what he says, I want to know sooner than later.**

**Fair. I’ll call u later this afternoon.**

Adrien responded with a thumbs-up, and Marinette slipped her phone into her purse and ran downstairs. The bakery was filled with the smell of ginger and spices. Her mother waved at her from behind the counter. “Hi, honey! Where are you off to?”

“I’m going to visit Luka and Juleka,” Marinette said automatically. She hated how easy lying to her parents had become, but her responsibilities as Ladybug came first, and with a bit of luck, what she was doing now would lead to the whole thing being over that much faster.

As she stepped out the door, her mother’s call of “have fun!” ringing in her ears, she frowned at the thought. This was  _ Adrien’s father _ she was thinking about. Of course she didn’t want M. Agreste to be Hawkmoth. That could ruin Adrien’s life. But then again, this fight had dragged on for over a year already, and this was the only progress they had made on discovering the villain's identity. A selfish little part of her just wanted her own life back.

She walked a little too fast through the streets, paying only the bare amount of attention she needed to remember the way to Master Fu’s apartment in an unfamiliar part of the city. The warm, sunny day made no impression on her. In seemingly no time at all, she was making her way up the dim flight of stairs. Master Fu must have heard her, because he opened the door just as she raised her hand to knock and ushered her inside. “Marinette,” he said once the door was closed behind her. “Where is Adrien?”

“He couldn’t make it,” she said hastily. “I offered to find another time, but he told me to go ahead. We have a question that we don’t want to wait on.”

Once Marinette finished explaining, she sat on the floor and fiddled with the strap of her bag as Master Fu swiped through photographs of the grimoire’s pages on his tablet. At last, he looked up at her with a furrowed brow. “I do not know, Marinette,” he admitted. “The grimoire says nothing on the subject. However, since we know that the peacock holder can use its power on him or herself, I believe we should assume that the butterfly works in the same way. M. Agreste must remain a suspect.”

“Right.” Marinette’s heart sank. “I should go...tell Adrien. Thank you very much for your help.”

As she stood, Fu stood with her. “Marinette,” he said as she reached for the doorknob. She turned back to him. “Normally it would not be ideal,” he said, “but given this...it may be fortunate that you and Adrien know each other’s identities. This would be a terrible burden for him to carry alone. Take care of him.”

*****

Marinette wanted to take Fu’s words to heart, she really did. But she put off and put off the moment of calling Adrien to tell him the news. At first, she told herself that she was waiting to make sure she didn’t interrupt his lunch with his father, but eventually she had to admit that the time was long past when it was reasonable to think that that meal was still going on, and she simply didn’t want to have to tell him that his father was still their prime suspect. It was close to four when she finally picked up the phone.

“Marinette? What did Master Fu say?”

She could feel her heart racing, and took a stab at a tone of voice that would be calm and reassuring but not patronizing, praying she struck the right balance. “He said...he said he doesn’t know if Hawkmoth could akumatize himself, so we should assume he can.”

There was a long silence on the other end, broken by some vague crackling as if Adrien was moving around. Finally, he spoke. “I see.”

“I’m sorry,” Marinette blurted out, and then wished she hadn’t; to her own ears, it only sounded pointless and pitying. Adrien let the comment pass.

“I did think of something else, though,” he said.

“What’s that”

“Madame Malheur.”

Marinette picked up one of the pillows from next to her on her chaise and hugged it to her stomach with her free hand. “What about her?”

“We think she and Hawkmoth probably know each other, right?”

They had talked this over months ago, not long after Mayura’s first appearance, and concluded that she had to know Hawkmoth’s goal if she was helping him, which suggested a trusting civilian relationship. “Yeah, we do.”

“Well,” Adrien said, “I can’t think of anyone in Father’s life who that could be. He’s never had a lot of friends, and he basically became a hermit after Mom left, which was before Hawkmoth appeared. He doesn’t really talk to anyone except Nathalie that I know of.”

Marinette knew she had to step carefully. “And you’re certain Nathalie couldn’t…?”

“Definitely not,” Adrien said, in a voice that radiated certainty, even over the phone. “Not with how sick she’s been.”

Marinette checked her memories of Madame Malheur fighting against the image of Nathalie from the day Chat Noir had lost his miraculous, dragging herself up the front steps of the mansion with a death grip on the railing. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll” -

“Marinette!” came her father’s voice from the stairs.

“Coming! Dad’s calling me,” she said to Adrien, bringing the phone back to her mouth. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, Marinette.” There was a short beep and the line went silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I too heavy-handed with the dramatic irony? Probably. Am I going to stop? Absolutely not.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today!
> 
> Also, one of my readers, Nagisa_Chan, did fantastic drawings of Yellowjacket and Madame Malheur - go check them out!  
> https://www.deviantart.com/nagisa-chan1/art/Yellowjacket-828104954?ga_submit_new=10%3A1579917283  
> https://www.deviantart.com/nagisa-chan1/art/Madame-Malheur-828426581?ga_submit_new=10%3A1580162700

For the last hour, the only sounds in the atelier had been the tapping of Nathalie’s fingers on the keyboard, Plagg snoring on the corner of her desk, and the occasional, indistinct mutters of frustration from Gabriel, who was working at his podium. He seemed to be back to his usual impassive demeanor this morning. On Saturday, when he came back from his lunch with Adrien in the early afternoon (finding Nathalie still there, printing out and organizing the replacements for all the papers her coffee spill had ruined), he had been smiling. It immediately brought Nathalie out of her own ill humor to see that his attempt to spend time with his son had been a success.

It had also reminded her of a question that she had shelved for the last few weeks, bringing it back to the forefront of her mind to nag at her all through what was supposed to be a restful Sunday. Presently, she pushed her chair back from her desk and approached Gabriel.

“Sir, I need to ask you something,” she said.

Gabriel looked over at her absently. “What is it?”

“We were distracted by what happened later in the day,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “so I never asked, but - you didn’t tell Adrien about Hawkmoth when you said you were going to.”

As she spoke, Gabriel’s eyes widened slightly, and though he didn’t turn toward her she could tell she had all of his attention.

“I was watching. He said something to you that made you angry, and you didn’t finish the conversation. What happened?”

Gabriel stood silently for several long seconds, his expression unreadable. “I told Adrien I needed to speak to him about something important,” he said at last. “He...made an assumption about what that was.”

Nathalie waited for him to elaborate, but he showed no signs of intending to. “He assumed…?” she prompted.

He looked pointedly ahead of him, refusing her attempt to meet his eyes. “If you must know,” he said stiffly, “he assumed I was breaking the news that we - that you and I were” -

Nathalie’s cheeks and ears went hot. She pressed her lips tightly together and turned her gaze away, down at the floor. “Ah. I see.”

After a moment, she forced herself to look back at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice her embarrassment, only to find him giving her an appraising look. Suddenly, it was as impossible to break eye contact as it had been to maintain it a moment ago. She felt herself flush more deeply.

“I shouldn’t have responded so defensively,” he added, in a slightly softer tone, his expression turning thoughtful. “Given the information he has, I suppose it’s...not entirely surprising that he made such an inference. I couldn’t have expected him to know better.”

“I suppose not,” Nathalie replied with some relief, because he was right, after all. Adrien didn’t know that his mother wasn’t missing, or the secrets that she and Gabriel shared; all he saw was her getting closer to his father, and surely a romantic relationship was the most straightforward explanation. That was all. Gabriel wasn’t suggesting anything. Wasn’t  _ suspecting _ her of anything.

It didn’t stop her from feeling as though he was entirely too close, as though his steel-blue eyes could read all her thoughts in the blush on her cheeks. She automatically clasped her hands in front of her and took a step back. Her movement seemed to draw Gabriel’s attention back from whatever thoughts it had wandered off to.

“He will have no more ideas, don’t worry,” he said.

Nathalie nodded, deciding to turn the conversation back in a safe direction. “You will find another time to tell him the truth, won’t you?” 

He sighed in response. If Nathalie knew him at all, he would have worked up his courage to bring the subject up once, and need to do it all over again after the first failure. But he fiddled with his stylus for a moment, and then said: “Yes.” 

As Nathalie turned to walk back to her desk, his voice stopped her. “Nathalie.”

She paused and turned back to him. “Yes?”

“Adrien said…” He faltered, swallowed, and she noticed his hand tense around the stylus. “He wasn’t upset. He said that, as far as he’s concerned, you’re part of the family.”

A smile tugged at her lips at that, but then she glanced past Gabriel’s shoulder at the gilded portrait of Emilie. Stylized though it was, she could clearly picture her friend’s living face through its vivid colors, looking at her woundedly with those huge eyes. Guilt bubbled up in her chest at the idea of Emilie coming back and finding that Nathalie had usurped her son’s affections, and it was guilt, not happiness, behind her words when she replied. “I’m touched. I had no idea I meant so much to him.”

Gabriel didn’t smile; that would have been too demonstrative for him in such a moment. But the lines of his faces were just a bit more relaxed than usual. “You mean very much to both of us. Now” - and he was back to his usual, serious self - “I believe we have a conference call in half an hour to get ready for.”

*****

Marinette and Adrien sat side by side on a park bench, eating the sandwiches that Marinette’s parents had offered them when they stopped in at the bakery. They had slipped away from school at the start of the lunch hour, trying to avoid notice by their friends, to talk about Saturday’s revelations. It was another hot, sunny day, without much in the way of breeze to relieve it, and they had found a bench in the shade. Marinette tucked one foot up underneath her.

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. She had a text from Alya.  **Where are u?? Kim said he saw u leave with Adrien!**

Marinette groaned.

“Who’s that?” Adrien asked with his mouth full.

“Alya, and I’m not answering it.” Marinette scrutinized Adrien’s profile. He was an impressive actor, having shown no hint all morning of the question that was surely haunting him. She glanced away when he turned his head and saw her watching him.

“So,” she said, “I think we need to talk about where we go from here.”

Adrien swallowed. “You’re right. I’m guessing it’s up to me to keep an eye on my father?”

“Uh” - Marinette wasn’t sure how to respond to his directness. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re in a better position than me to try to find out more.”

Across the park, the carousel started turning, and tinny music and children’s giggles drifted across the open space to them. In the hot, still air, even these noises sounded vaguely sluggish. Adrien stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. Marinette pulled nervously at her pigtails, watched the brightly-painted horses bob up and down, and waited.

“I still kind of can’t believe it,” Adrien said finally. “I mean, he can be strict and grumpy, but I can’t imagine him  _ evil _ .”

Marinette ran a hand down the sweaty back of her neck and wiped it on the knee of her pants. “We still don’t know for sure,” she reminded him. “You made a really good point about Madame Malheur, and remember that we’ve never seen Hawkmoth use any of the information from the book. We just need to look into it more, that’s all.”

“That’s going to be hard,” Adrien said. “It’s not like I can try to account for him during akuma attacks. We have to fight, and I hardly ever see him anyway. He would definitely notice something was up if I tried to keep track of him like that.”

“Hmm. I don’t suppose that you ever have the chance to get into his office and look around?

Adrien chuckled humorlessly. “I might be able to find a chance, but it would all be over if I got caught.”

Marinette opened her mouth to say something else, but at that moment, both their phones started blaring the alarm tone that meant an akuma sighting. “Speak of the devil,” Marinette said, at the same moment as Adrien jumped to his feet.

“I” - he blurted out and then stopped himself. “Don’t have to make a stupid excuse! Come on!” He grabbed Marinette’s wrist and pulled her across the street into a shadowed opening between buildings. Marinette glanced at her phone as Adrien pulled his miraculous out of a pocket and fixed it in his hair.

“Uh-oh.” She turned the screen toward him. “Looks like our newest friend is there too.”

Adrien glared. “I’m going to show her what a bee sting feels like. Pollen, buzz on!”

Marinette transformed as well, and together they sprinted out of their hiding place and down the street, heading east toward the location of their latest opponent.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second half of the double update, in case anyone came straight to this chapter and missed the last one.

Nathalie took each step with deliberate care as she made her way back to the mansion after the fight, checking inside herself continually for any sign that might warn of the onset of another fit of pain. She already missed the feeling she had for those few minutes after last time, of believing that she wouldn’t need to fear detransforming anymore. Yet her body cooperated as she walked at a cautious pace through the streets, and by the time she made it into the courtyard, she was allowing herself to suspect that maybe this time, it really would be all right. 

She scraped her palm on some invisible sharp spot on the iron railing, so she went to the kitchen for a bandage before making her way up to the atelier. Naturally, Gabriel’s eyes zeroed in on it as soon as she entered.

“I didn’t see this happen,” he said worriedly, taking her hand in both of his and turning it over, inspecting the bandage. “Are you all right? I still don’t like sending you out in the field.”

“That wasn’t from the battle. I cut myself on the railing on the front steps.”

Gabriel ran his fingers across her palm, over the bandages, and she shivered. He looked up from her hand and met her eyes. “You fought wonderfully. Forgive me for worrying.”

From off to her left, Plagg made a mocking cooing noise. “So when’s the wedding?”

Nathalie felt herself blush, and thought she saw a hint of color on Gabriel’s cheeks as well as they both turned to glare at the kwaami. Gabriel let go of her hand as if it burned him and she let it fall to her side. “Behave yourself,” she said sharply to Plagg. “I don’t want to have to silence you.” She doubted she could stand to treat Plagg the way Gabriel used to treat Nooroo, but he didn’t need to know that.

Plagg folded his arms and turned his back on them, but he didn’t say anything else. Nathalie sighed. “Apologies. He’s difficult.”

“I noticed.” 

*****

Plagg meant to ignore them, but Nathalie’s next words caught his attention. “Although, part of me wonders if Duusu wouldn’t be the same way, if she understood what was going on.”

“You think the miraculous being broken affected Duusu’s mind?” Gabriel asked.

Plagg’s ears pricked up, but he continued to feign sulking, resisting the urge to turn his head and look behind them.

“I think it might have. You saw her; she was like a child. I never got the impression that she grasped the seriousness of the situation - of what I was doing with her, that is. Nothing much seemed to stick in her mind from day to day, or even moment to moment. Remember after Reflekdoll, when she was rushing around giggling like it was all a game, and then turned concerned when I coughed, and straight back to hyperactive when you said it was fine? She was sweet, but that can’t be right.”

Plagg tensed as Nathalie spoke. Childlike? Forgetting things? That didn’t sound like Duusu at all. Not his empathetic friend, who could take in every emotion and experience it to its fullest and then let it pass, who underneath was the stablest and wisest of any of them. He resisted the urge to turn around and start making accusations. If he did that, he might lose his chance to find out more. But he fumed as he listened.

“I wish we knew how the miraculous was broken,” Nathalie went on. Plagg deflated.

“I suspected than Emilie had theories,” Gabriel said, “but she didn’t share them.”

Nathalie started to say something else, but just then the phone rang, and it was back to business for the both of them. Plagg, to whom neither of them was paying attention anymore, went to the windowsill and curled up against the glass. He watched the courtyard, and the cars passing on the street below. After a bit more time, the Agrestes’ own black car pulled in, and Adrien hopped out of the backseat, looking happy even from a distance - another victory under his belt as Yellowjacket. Plagg wished for night to come faster.

*****

It felt like forever, but at last, Nathalie was asleep in her apartment, and for the second time Plagg was able to slip away. This time, Adrien woke up more quickly. “Plagg! You’re back!”

“Shh, don’t wake up your old man. This isn’t a social visit.”

“What?” Adrien asked, sitting up in bed. The setting of the sun hadn’t done much to alleviate the heat, and he had kicked off all his blankets and was only half-covered by a sheet.

“Listen, kid, I can’t stay long but they let something slip that you really should know.”

Adrien perked up. “I thought you couldn’t tell me anything.”

“This,” Plagg said smugly, “doesn’t fall into any of the categories I’m forbidden from talking about. The peacock miraculous is broken.”

“Broken?” Adrien frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “Mayura seemed to be doing fine. She was more dangerous than Hawkmoth or any of his akumas.”

“Yeah, she was, but I definitely heard them talking about it being broken.”

There was a creak out in the hall and they both froze, but after a long silence, Adrien whispered: “Just the house. It makes weird noises sometimes when the weather changes. So, what does it mean that the miraculous is broken?”

Plagg shrugged, even though he knew Adrien couldn’t see him. “I’m not sure. Miraculous don’t get broken a lot, and there have always been teams of senior guardians who fix them right away. Honestly, your guess is as good as mine what might happen if someone used one. But I bet it’s not good.”

“I’ll talk to Marinette and Master Fu,” Adrien said. “Thanks for coming to tell me, Plagg. I know it’s a risk for you to leave.” He offered his hand, and Plagg settled in it and let Adrien hold him against his chest. He started to purr.

“I miss you, kid.”

“Miss you too.”

Neither of them wanted the moment to end, but after a time Adrien yawned, and Plagg stirred. An uneasy feeling settled over him, making his fur stand on end. He had been away a long time. “I need to go.”

As soon as Plagg got within sight of Nathalie’s apartment, he knew he was in trouble. There were lights glowing behind the curtains in the front windows. He dropped down below them and phased slowly through the wall, hoping to appear near floor level and not be noticed. But he had never had Tikki’s good luck, and as soon as he tentatively passed through the drywall into the living room, he saw Nathalie’s cold eyes on him.

“What have you been doing?” She was clearly not making any effort to soften her tone.

Plagg floated slowly up to his holder’s eye level. She looked terrible, with hair disheveled and eyes shadowed - with exhaustion or smeared leftover makeup, Plagg couldn’t tell - and there was a glare on her face to make even the bravest kwaami cower. Plagg crossed his arms in a half-defiant, half-defensive gesture.

“You were sneaking out to talk to your last holder, weren’t you?” She raised a mug Plagg hadn’t noticed her holding to her lips and took a sip, still glaring at him over the rim. “Don’t answer that. From now on, same rule for you as for Nooroo. Stay within fifteen feet of me, at all times, no exceptions.”

Her voice was furious, but there was a brittle quality to it as well. Plagg watched mutely as she sank down on the couch. She rubbed at her eyes with her free hand, not even bothering to take off her glasses, just shoving them crookedly up onto her forehead. “What am I going to do with you?” she muttered, more to herself than to Plagg. “This was supposed to get us closer to  _ finishing _ this whole mess.”

This Nathalie sitting on the sofa, clinging to her mug, was a very different Nathalie than the poised and controlled one that Plagg was used to, and he watched in silence, unsure what to make of it. He had never imagined Mayura, who seemed so gleeful in a fight, so devoted to Hawkmoth, looking quite so shattered. She stared down into her drink with eyes wide, clearly trying to stop the tears Plagg could see in her eyes from falling. It only worked for a few seconds. Nathalie brushed at her cheeks with her hands, then, when the tears kept coming, reached for the tissue box on the coffee table and found it empty.

“Shit,” she muttered. She set her mug down hard, so that some of its content sloshed over the rim onto the table, and went to get a paper towel from the kitchenette. Plagg kept looking at the mug. This was the enemy, he reminded himself. She was evil, except for the pesky fact that...she wasn’t, quite. By the look of it, the whole thing was hurting her as much as it was hurting the heroes.

_ “Shit,” _ came her voice from the kitchenette, louder this time. “I thought I turned that off.” Plagg glanced over to see her shutting off a stove burner, and then she came back and settled on the couch again, clutching a wad of damp paper towels in her hand. She gave him a look that clearly meant  _ what are you looking at _ , but appeared to lack the energy to say anything about it. Instead, she tucked her bare feet up underneath her and stared at the wall with red eyes.

Plagg, feeling half pitying and half guilty, sat on the back of the couch.

After a time, Nathalie spoke again, not looking over her shoulder at him, her voice slurred with weariness. “I didn’t want this fight, Plagg.”

Plagg didn’t answer. But after another indefinite stretch of silence, when Nathalie’s eyes closed and her head sank back against the cushions, he shifted his position, and fifteen-foot rule notwithstanding, let himself drift off to sleep a little closer to her than he otherwise might have.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten chapters and counting - I can hardly believe it! I was nervous even to start posting one-shots, which is really the only format I've practiced, and I doubted that I would ever be able to come up with a plot that would sustain a longer story, let alone get people invested. And yet here we are. Y'all have surprised me in the best way; thank you.

Adrien saw Nino’s raised eyebrows across the courtyard as he snuck out the back door, side by side with Marinette, for the second day in a row. A faint wolf-whistle drifted after them. Marinette’s face hardened slightly, but she said nothing, so Adrien decided it would be best if he didn’t either.

He had sent her a text the night before, saying only that he had heard something about which they needed to talk to their mutual friend ASAP. She had filled in the gaps as he knew she would, and greeted him that morning with a whisper of “lunchtime” as she brushed past him in the hall outside the locker rooms. In hindsight, he wished they had left separately. As the door clicked shut behind them, he could practically hear the snickering that had to be beginning on the other side.

They slipped into an alley to transform, knowing they didn’t have time to walk there and back on their lunch break, and made the journey in their usual manner, ignoring the glimpses they got of people pointing and exclaiming on the streets below. Or rather, Yellowjacket ignored them while his partner threw smiles and waves to their audience. With the exception of the one training patrol he had taken with Ladybug under the cover of dusk, he hadn’t appeared in public without an akuma to fight since losing the cat miraculous, and he had made the mistake (more than once, at which point he supposed it wasn’t a mistake but a blatantly bad decision) of going on the internet to see what people were saying about the event.

Many - especially professional news sources, and the Ladyblog, bless Alya - were astonished by the cunning of Mayura’s deception and outraged at the emotional manipulation she had used, and came to Chat Noir’s defense. Others were less forgiving. Yellowjacket didn’t want to meet any of the watching eyes, so for once, he stared straight ahead as he ran and let his lady encourage and charm the people of Paris in his stead.

A few blocks from Master Fu’s apartment, they dropped down into the shadows to detransform and walk the rest of the way. The guardian looked surprised when he welcomed them in, cup of tea in hand. “Adrien, Marinette. What is this about?”

Adrien pushed the door shut behind them and sat down on the rug; the others joined him, forming a close circle. “The peacock miraculous is broken,” he said without preamble.

He hadn’t yet told Marinette what they needed to talk about, having not found a chance to do it privately, and following their policy of discussing hero matters as little as possible over text. She frowned, brow scrunching up with obvious confusion. “What? How? Mayura used it at least a few times.”

“Adrien, how do you know?” asked Master Fu, leaning forward. While Marinette’s expression was merely baffled, Fu’s was alarmed. Adrien clasped his hands together, running the fingers of his right hand over the place where his ring was supposed to be.

“Plagg visited me last night.” Fu’s eyebrows lifted. “It was the second time he snuck away from the villains to come see me. The first time he couldn’t tell me anything, he said Madame Malheur swore him to secrecy about most things. But apparently they let slip that the miraculous was broken, and he was able to tell me that.”

Master Fu let out a breath. “If Plagg comes again, tell him not to,” he said seriously. “Madame Malheur will not be able to compel him to reveal your name, but he could very well be followed.”

The room seemed to lurch around Adrien, making his stomach turn. How had he not thought of that? He folded his arms, fingers gripping the fabric of his sleeves, and took a deep breath, trying not to appear too affected as his mentor continued. “As to the matter of the broken miraculous…”

“What does it mean?” Marinette jumped in, not letting him finish. She was leaning forward as well, bouncing one knee as she sat cross-legged. “What does a broken miraculous do?”

Master Fu fixed them with a solemn look. “Damage to a miraculous is extremely rare,” he said, “and never allowed to progress far. There is no way to predict what the effects might be. If this is truly the case, you should perhaps be more frightened  _ for _ her than frightened  _ of _ her.”

Marinette made a frustrated sound. “Is there  _ anything _ you can tell us? Even guesses?”

There was a pause as Master Fu swirled the tea in his cup. Then he said, “I know a bit about how the miraculous function, but only a bit. They channel enormous power through a relatively weak human vessel. It is a highly sensitive relationship.” He took a sip of tea. “We know that the damage to the peacock has not prevented Mayura from accessing that power. I suspect, then, that something has gone wrong with the magic that limits and regulates it.”

Adrien picked at the rug. “So she might have had a hard time controlling her abilities? She seemed to fight fine, but that would explain why she didn’t get involved much.”

“Maybe. Or it could have been affecting her physically, or mentally, or there could have been magical side effects manifesting that you never saw. Or it might have seemed as though nothing was wrong, and the trouble would have begun later if she continued to use it. Again, I must stress how uncertain a matter this is.”

A question rose to Adrien’s mind, sending a nauseous chill down the back of his neck, but Marinette spared him from having to ask it. “If she was being made physically ill by the miraculous, wouldn’t that have shown while she was transformed?”

“I would be inclined to think so.”

Marinette and Adrien glanced at each other and then back to Fu.

“One thing is certain,” Fu went on. “A broken miraculous is not a thing to be handled lightly. Either this woman lacked any common sense and respect for the power of what she had, or she was under compulsion, or - I think most likely - she is committed enough to Hawkmoth and his cause to run terrible risks. Keep your wits about you. She seems to be a great danger to you and to herself.”

“But now that she isn’t using the peacock, it can’t affect her anymore, can it?” Marinette asked, but her voice faltered.

Fu only shrugged. “I cannot say.”

*****

The basement never ceased to unsettle Nathalie, and while it worried her when Gabriel fell into one of his dark moods and shut himself away to brood over his dead wife, she was grateful that this was one area of his life on which he clearly did not want her intruding. She had been there twice: once when Gabriel was putting Emilie’s body in the machine that would preserve it, and once shortly after he told her of his plan to become Hawkmoth. After that, he had never brought her there again, and that was perfectly fine by Nathalie.

Accordingly, it surprised her when he asked her to help tend the butterflies. There was something almost funny about the fact that Gabriel raised his own butterflies in his secret basement, despite the clear rationale of avoiding suspicious purchases, but she wasn’t laughing when she stepped out of the lift into that cavernous dim space, under the gaze of the massive rose window backlit by bulbs that were supposed to mimic sunlight and didn’t quite succeed. Her and Gabriel’s steps echoed on the metal-grate walkway over to the coffin.

The last time Nathalie had been here, the bushes hadn’t yet been planted; the coffin was surrounded only by roughly constructed wooden beds full of bare soil. The addition of the greenery didn’t improve the scene in the slightest. The odd lighting gave the plants a faint brownish cast, and they looked horribly out of place in their dense little mass, huddling around the coffin, surrounded by so much metal.

Nathalie reached a hand up under the veil attached to her hat and rubbed it across her forehead. The air was oddly humid, and felt like it was slithering under her clothes to coat her skin like grease. Following Gabriel’s instructions, she knelt by the nearest bush and started poking around the branches, looking for nearly-ready cocoons that would be taken up to the lair to hatch there.

Meanwhile, Gabriel had paused in front of the coffin. He was speaking softly, loud enough that Nathalie could have made it out if she listened, but not so loud that she couldn’t drown him out by deliberately rustling the leaves a little more forcefully. Apparently he didn’t mind her overhearing what he had to say to Emilie, but she had no desire to know what it was.

By the time he joined her, she had found five cocoons, clipped off the twigs they were attached to, and propped them in the box beside her so that they hung without touching the sides or bottom. Just as he knelt beside her, she felt the bandage on her hand snag somewhere inside the bush she was probing. A few tugs, a snap and a tearing sound, and her hand came free with the bandage ripped and bits of bark sticking to it.

“Nathalie, two of these are dead,” Gabriel said from next to her. She turned to peer into the box, and noticed that he was right: two of the five cocoons were gray and slightly shrivelled, next to the sleek white ones. 

“Apologies, I must not have been paying attention,” she said quietly, and looked down at her hand, adjusting the disarranged bandage. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabriel taking the dead cocoons back out of the box and setting them under the bushes, surprisingly gently.

Silence fell, or something closely akin to silence; in the echoey stillness of the enormous room, every breath, every snap of a twig or rustle of clothes seemed to magnify and ripple outward before fading, but for a time neither of them said anything, and in unconscious deference to the peculiar acoustics they kept their activity as quiet as they could. Oddly enough, Gabriel was the first to speak.

“Emilie was the green thumb,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s a miracle I’ve managed to keep these alive.” He gave a short, tense laugh.

Nathalie only hummed in response, glancing sideways and finding his face hard to make out, shadowed as it was and separated from her by both their veils. She knew what was coming. She had heard the like often enough before. 

“She was remarkable at everything she did,” he went on, and Nathalie thought she saw the hint of a smile on his lips. “It was as though she belonged to some other world. I’m still astonished that she chose to marry me.”

Nathalie shifted her position, leaning in closer to the bushes to hide her face. It was as difficult to think about Emilie as it was to look straight at a heat shimmer in the road on a summer day. Nathalie couldn’t figure out for the life of her what it had been about the woman that made everyone who came in contact with her feel like they needed to thank her for the privilege, and yet she felt it too, even now, working every day under the watchful eyes of the painting that carried only a shadow of the living Emilie’s presence; Gabriel, in his vague adoring speeches, didn’t seem to know either, and yet it compelled him even more than it did Nathalie. He was far from the only man to worship at Emilie’s feet. It seemed that nearly every man who met her did. Gabriel had simply been the luckiest.

And it was impossible to see their attitude toward her as absurd, the way it would have looked directed at most other women. That was simply Emilie. She was more like something made of silk and marble than muscles and bones. 

Gabriel was speaking again. “I’ve wondered all this time what she was doing with the peacock miraculous,” he mused, voice tender. “What was so secret that she couldn’t tell me, and so important that she risked what it was doing to her.” Even obscured, his expression shone with admiration and pride, undiminished by the fact that he didn’t know exactly what he was proud of. It wasn’t the first time he had wondered aloud in Nathalie’s hearing, but neither of them had come any closer to figuring out the answer.

But it was Emilie. Whatever the secret, it would surely turn out to be just as poetic and enigmatic, just as  _ extraordinary _ as she herself had been.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the missed update last week! I'll tell the rest of you what I told my Discord server at the time: I had awful writer's block over that weekend and I knew if I tried to force it I would only stress myself out and post something I didn't like. I decided to wait to post a chapter I was proud of, and it worked, I think.

A knock came on the atelier door, and before either Gabriel or Nathalie could respond, Adrien pulled it open and stepped through, looking sheepish. “Father?”

Gabriel looked up from his podium. “Yes, Adrien?”

Adrien stood with his hands behind his back, head ducked slightly in a submissive posture, and not for the first time, Gabriel felt a pang at the way his son’s manner had changed compared to how he used to act at home when his mother was alive. They needed her back.

“One of my friends from school invited me for a picnic this afternoon,” Adrien said. “May I go?”

Nathalie gave him a sharp glance and a nod over the top of her computer monitor, but it was hardly necessary, as he had already anticipated that she would. It still irked him the tiniest bit, her confidence that she knew what was best for his son, always carefully tempered by her professionalism, but without which he knew she wouldn’t dare to speak up at all - but heaven only knew he needed the help.

He held Nathalie’s gaze for a moment before looking back at Adrien. “Very well. Be back by eight.”

Adrien was clearly trying to contain himself, but his grin gave away his excitement. “Thank you, father!” He turned on his heel and practically bounced out the door, pulling it shut with a bang behind him. Nathalie flinched at the noise.

Plagg and Nooroo, who were sitting on the windowsill, had ducked behind the curtain when Adrien knocked. It wasn’t the best of hiding places, as Nathalie had cracked the window and the mild summer air (the oppressive heat of the previous week had finally broken) made the light fabric shift and blow, but they hadn’t been seen. At the sound of the door closing, they emerged and settled back in the middle of the sill to continue whatever conversation they had been having. 

Gabriel gave them a distrustful glance. He didn’t particularly like allowing the two of them to talk, despite Nathalie’s quite sensible protests that Plagg was bound to her now and as such no harm could come of anything Nooroo might tell him. Only Nathalie’s pushing to let the two of them spend time together, the same way she pushed for greater freedom for Adrien, had persuaded Gabriel to give his permission. She and the cat kwaami had clearly forged a tentative truce after the first few days of open hostility, though Gabriel had not been made privy to whatever prompted it.

As if on cue, Plagg somersaulted off the windowsill and over to Nathalie’s desk. Words were exchanged - accompanied by a small but apparently sincere smile from Nathalie - and she pushed a small bowl that Gabriel hadn’t noticed on the edge of the desk in Plagg’s direction. Plagg gestured for Nooroo to join him and they both perched on the edge of the bowl. It looked as though Nathalie had started to keep cheese and grapes on hand for them.

A week had passed since their afternoon in the butterfly room, with four more akumas, three of whom Madame Malheur had aided, and none of whom had succeeded. It became clear that Gabriel and Nathalie had missed the window of vulnerability as Yellowjacket adjusted to his new abilities; he was settling in, adapting, and had even started to resume his infuriating banter on occasion.

Gabriel had been loathe to let Nathalie back out in the field after their scare the first time she used the black cat, and even though the second time, and then the third and fourth and fifth, passed without any physical symptoms that he had noticed, he rather wished she wouldn’t throw herself into the line of fire so eagerly. 

A muffled swear word came from the corner of the atelier.

And that was why. Nathalie didn’t swear at her work or tug at the strand of hair that fell across her forehead or come in to work with dark creases under her eyes, and he never felt a low-level hum of stress and exhaustion emanating from her and being picked up by his miraculous - until this week. She was clearly stressed. He worried that the frequent fights on top of her regular workload were simply too much for even her impressive time-management skills. The technical difficulties they had been having - randomly corrupted files, internet cutting out right when important emails were being sent - surely didn’t help her peace of mind either.

“Sir?”

Her lips were pressed tightly together, but she otherwise gave no indication of whatever was going on in her mind. “I sent you the records you wanted from last quarter.”

“Ah, thank you.” He hesitated with his gaze still fixed on hers.

She faltered. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all.”

Nathalie turned back to her computer with what might have been a sigh. The kwaamis had paused in their conversation and were watching the exchange with their wide reflective eyes. A stiff breeze blew through the open window and set the curtains fluttering.

*****

Marinette flopped back on the picnic blanket with a wide smile. “That was amazing.”

“It helps that the desserts came from the best bakery in Paris.” Adrien laid down next to her, and without thinking about it, she shifted so that their arms were pressed together.

They had agreed, just for today, to be Marinette and Adrien, not Ladybug and Yellowjacket; no hero business was allowed for the duration of the picnic. Marinette hadn’t wanted to agree at first, given that it had been a week since their conversation with Fu and they were no closer to figure out their next steps. But Adrien’s eyes had been pleading, though his tone was lighthearted. He clearly hadn’t had a break from the thought of his father and his mother figure possibly being the unhinged domestic terrorists he had sworn to fight. So Marinette had given him that break. And it was nice.

His voice interrupted her thoughts as they started to wander back toward villains and surveillance and strategy. “That cloud looks like a sloth.”

“Where?” she asked, squinting up into the bright sky. 

He pointed. “That one. See, there’s the arms, and the head, and the tail.”

Marinette looked where he was gesturing and scoffed. “A sloth that grew up in Chernobyl, maybe.”

“Aww, come on, it was better when I first saw it. The wind is making it change shape.”

“You know,” Marinette said, “my parents told me that I tried to sneak into the sloth enclosure at the zoo when I was little. I wanted to bring one home as a pet.”

Adrien laughed. “And how did that go over?”

“I hadn’t gotten it through my head yet that it’s a health hazard to have animals living in a bakery.”

At that, he turned his head to look at her. “So no pets, ever?”

“No. It’s okay, though, I’ll have plenty of time for that when I get older and move out.”

Adrien hummed and turned his attention back to the sky. “One time I found a stray cat in the courtyard and tried to convince my parents to keep it.”

“I bet your father hated that.” Marinette stiffened as soon as she spoke. She had been avoiding the topic of Adrien’s father all afternoon; the question had just slipped out. Luckily, Adrien didn’t seem bothered.

“Believe it or not, he didn’t mind the idea. It was Mom who wouldn’t let us.”

Another question rose to Marinette’s lips. She debated for a few moments, watching a handful of pigeons swooping by overhead, before deciding it couldn’t hurt. “What was your mom like?”

Adrien didn’t answer right away, and Marinette wasn’t sure if he had heard. She crossed one ankle over the other and looked up at the clouds, listening to the chatter of children at the playground on the other side of the new park they had found, one that was closer to Adrien’s house. 

“She was the people person of the family,” Adrien said. “Father was a lot less cold before she disappeared, and he did have some friends, but she knew everyone and everyone loved her. She was really big on family, too - making sure we all did things together. That’s part of why she didn’t want me in school, or really out of the house much.”

Marinette frowned up at the sky. Her parents valued their family too, but they had never acted like letting her have a social life took away from that. And she was sure her old friend Joanna’s family hadn’t been like that either, and she was homeschooled like Adrien.  _ But Adrien doesn’t need you finding fault with his mother right now _ , she chided herself.

She snuggled closer against him and let the conversation lapse into warm, sunlit silence.

*****

Gabriel tapped his fingers against the edge of the screen in front of him, staring in frustration at the image taking shape on it: a backless indigo dress with red accents. Something about the design wasn’t working, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.

He glanced over at his assistant; she was frowning at the notepad he recognized as the one where she kept her to-do lists. She picked up a pen as he watched and made a single firm line across the paper. Between tasks, then. Perfect.

“Nathalie,” he said.

She looked up at once. “Sir?”

“Come look at this design for me. It’s giving me trouble.”

The faint hum of stress that he had been sensing from her rose as she approached, heels tapping on the tiles. He stepped to the side to make room for her in front of the podium and looked over at her, searching her face for a clue as to her uncharacteristic mood, but she was focused dutifully on the sketch in front of them, her expression as impassive as ever. 

“I think,” she said slowly, “that this bit of trim here” - but Gabriel didn’t get the chance to see what she was indicating, because almost as soon as she touched the screen, it glitched once, twice, three times and went black. 

Nathalie froze with her hand hovering just over the screen. Gabriel could sense the stress and anxiety welling up in her, prickling along his skin like a static charge, tasting like the ozone in the air before a lightning strike. It was an outsized reaction to an innocent and relatively small problem, and it concerned him. “Nathalie?” he said cautiously.

She slowly lowered her hand back to her side. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what happened.”

“Ah, well, electronics are always acting up.” He watched her out of the corners of his eyes as he pressed the power button, and the monitor whirred and lit up with a logo as it started to reboot. “It’s no loss anyway; I was at an impasse with that particular piece.”

He straightened as she began to turn away to go back to her desk. “Wait.”

“Yes?”

The feeling of tension hadn’t abated; it stretched between Gabriel’s brooch and Nathalie like a taut cord, drawing him to her. “Nathalie,” he began, “is everything all right?”

“Of course,” she said coolly. Her voice wasn’t defensive, quite, but it was reserved, giving him the sense that she was trying to gauge the situation before opening up.

“It just seems that you’ve been a bit...stressed, the last few days.” He didn’t know if that was the right thing to say, but if Nathalie’s demeanor didn’t open up any further, neither did it shut down; she just kept looking at him with those unreadable blue eyes. He took it as enough of a sign to continue. “Using the black cat miraculous isn’t still making you ill, is it?”

At that, her face relaxed just slightly. “No. There have been no side effects since the first time.”

He had thought so, but while he trusted Nathalie not to lie in answer to a direct question, he could easily see her simply not mentioning a problem. “Well, then, perhaps your workload…?”

That was the wrong thing to say. “Has there been a problem with me fulfilling my responsibilities?” she asked in a clipped tone, and Gabriel could sense her bristling, though she concealed it outwardly. He tried to backpedal.

“Not at all. I just…” he floundered for a moment for something to say that wouldn’t offend her pride. “I worry about you.”

The sudden defensiveness eased as quickly as it had flared up as a slight smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I appreciate your concern, sir, but I assure you there is nothing to worry about. Just minor inconveniences piling up.” She shifted, and a patch of sunlight from the window fell across her, gleaming on her smooth dark hair and lighting up the dust motes floating in the air between them. She was almost too bright to look at. “I should be getting back to my work.”

He nodded and she was gone. Frowning, he turned back to his monitor, which had finally finished booting up again, and resisted the urge to look over at her as she moved in his peripheral vision. The hum had faded somewhat as she returned to her own side of the room, but it was still present, making him wonder if he should have pressed harder or if that would only have made her more determined not to admit to struggling. Even as it stood, he suspected she would take any offer of help as condescension.

He hoped that she would trust him enough to tell him if it got to be too much for her to handle. Then again, this was Nathalie Sancouer, so such a hope was probably foolish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was homeschooled all the way through graduation, my family was a very healthy one, and I like to think I turned out okay. It's only in the context of what else we know about the Agrestes that I think Adrien's homeschooling is suspicious. Just so we're clear.


	12. Chapter 12

A brisk wind raced through the streets, making a low roar in Nathalie’s ears as she walked and trying to disarrange her bun. The handful of clear mild days that followed the end-of-summer heat wave had been succeeded in turn by low gray clouds and blustery air. It had been merely overcast this morning, but now, late in the afternoon, the sky had deepened in shade, taking on an ominous blue-violet color, and the wind was continuing to pick up. Nathalie lowered her head and pondered calling for the car to be sent, but decided against it; the mansion was only a few blocks away. She could make it before the rain began.

The first few drops landed on the crown of her head and the lenses of her glasses as she crossed the courtyard, and moments after she pulled the door shut behind her, she heard the sounds of a drenching rainstorm start up outside. She fished a cloth out of her pocket and wiped the lenses of her glasses, then made her way upstairs to the atelier. As soon as she opened the door, a chill and the smell of petrichor washed over her, sending a shiver down her spine. The kwaamis, of course, were absent from their usual place, but the window had been left open, and a puddle was already forming on the sill. Nathalie rushed to close it.

Plagg darted out of her blazer pocket as she looked around the room. The lights were off, and though it was still the middle of the day, the weather outside made the room shadowy. The gilt on Emilie’s portrait caught the dim gray light strangely; her painted eyes looked more visible than they should have. Nathalie turned away, back to the window. The rain was coming down so hard that she could barely see across the courtyard to the gate on the opposite side. 

It was odd that Gabriel was nowhere to be seen. He usually vacated his secret attic quickly after an akuma was defeated, and Nathalie had taken her time walking back from the fight halfway across the city, being in no hurry to return to the never-ending hassles of her office job. She switched on the lights, then switched them off again, finding them uncomfortably harsh and glaring in contrast to the rainy dimness, and disliking the way they turned the window into a mirror and made the view on the other side of the glass look even darker than it was; sat down at her desk, turned down the brightness of her monitor to avoid straining her eyes, and spent some time looking through the emails that had come in while she was gone. When she finished and her employer still hadn’t appeared, she picked up her phone.

He answered on the third ring. “Yes, Nathalie? Are you back safe?”

“I got back twenty minutes ago,” she said, barely remembering to add, “sir. Where are you?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Upstairs in my bedroom.”

Nathalie said nothing, waiting to see if he would explain.

“I’ve decided to go through some of Emilie’s things.”

Nathalie’s eyes widened, and she thanked her stars that they were having this conversation over the phone, where he couldn’t see her face. “Ah. Well, I...I won’t disturb you, then.”

“It’s no disturbance,” he said quickly. “In fact…” His voice trailed off, and Nathalie had a realization. He didn’t want to be alone, but of course the man wouldn’t let himself admit it outright.

“Would you like me to come up?” she asked gently.

There was a crackle through the phone, hard to make out over the still-torrential rainfall, but that might have been a sigh. “If you’re not too busy...please.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Nathalie hung up the phone and shut down her computer, noting as she did that the room had grown darker even in the short time she had been sitting there. She gestured for Plagg to follow. The master suite was another floor up, on the far side of the house, and it felt like a very long walk through the dim, silent hallways. At last she reached the top of a flight of stairs and saw light pouring out around a door that was sitting ajar.

She used to come in here, sometimes, when Emilie was alive and Nathalie helped care for a much younger Adrien, but in recent years there had been no reason. Yet the room didn’t appear to have changed at all. As Nathalie peered inside, she noted a pair of Emilie’s white flats still sitting by the bed, as if their owner would appear in the room to dress at any moment.

Gabriel stood in front of an open wardrobe, out of which nothing seemed to have been taken yet except for a sky-blue dress draped over the top of one of the doors. To Nathalie, the phrase “going through things” called to mind a twice-yearly, week-long ritual from her childhood in which every room in the house was turned inside out and her family suspended their strict cleanliness in favor of haphazard sorting piles on every available surface, so she had anticipated a more chaotic scene, but she supposed Gabriel’s pensive reluctance only made sense. It was a step in the right direction that he was willing to touch her possessions at all, when for so long he had left everything untouched and ready for her return.

He didn’t seem to have noticed her enter, so she walked up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. When he turned to her, she noticed a slight redness around his eyes, as though he had cried. “Nathalie,” he said quietly.

“Gabriel.”

The situation was already past the boundaries of professionalism, and after a second or two of holding eye contact silently, Nathalie decided to set aside those boundaries completely for the time being. She wrapped her arms around him. He stiffened in surprise, but only for a moment, before hugging her back, tightly, almost desperately. Her face was pressed against the front of his shoulder; she shifted so that it was nestled into the crook of his neck, and he rested his cheek against her hair. He was trembling slightly. 

Here, at the top of the house, the rain on the roof made a low roar in the background. Nathalie rubbed her thumb up and down on his back and felt his breathing gradually slow and deepen as he began to relax. She didn’t care that he was crumpling her blazer or worry about Adrien coming to look for them. Even Plagg was mercifully staying silent. 

Eventually, he loosened his hold on her, pulled away and looked down at her with a wisp of a smile. “I don’t suppose you would help me with sorting these clothes, would you?” he asked, breaking the delicate bubble of stillness that surrounded them.

Nathalie smiled back. “Of course. What...what are you trying to do?”

She didn’t ask  _ why are you doing this _ , because she knew that the answer would remain true only as long as it remained unspoken. If she so much as suggested that he was entertaining the thought of a world without Emilie, he would deny it twice as vehemently as before. The possibility needed to be handled like one of the warblers in the garden bushes, which you could only get a good look at by pretending not to see them.

So when he answered, “I would like to pick a few things to put in storage, so that they aren’t taking up space here,” she only nodded, and set about looking through the wardrobe and holding up garments one at a time for his evaluation.

Emilie had owned as large and varied a collection of clothes as one would expect from the daughter of a wildly wealthy family who had married a fashion designer, and their progress was slow, since Gabriel pondered over each dress for some time before making a decision. He said very little, but it was clear to Nathalie that the process was bringing back memories. Before she knew it, two hours had passed, and they had made it through only a fraction of what Gabriel wanted to sort that night.

He noticed Nathalie muffling a yawn, and glanced at his watch. “Goodness, I didn’t notice the time. You should be getting home to rest.” His steel-blue eyes fixed on hers, looking alert and present for the first time since they had begun the sorting.

“We can pick this up tomorrow,” she answered. All of a sudden she realized that the downpour had stopped at some point, leaving quiet in its wake, and a line of dazzling light, reflected from the lowering sun off the rain-washed surfaces of the buildings outside, was visible between the closed curtains. She turned toward the door. “Have a good evening, sir.”

“You as well.”

She was reaching for the door handle when he said her name, making her pause and look behind her. “Yes?”

He cleared his throat and tugged at the edge of his sleeve. “Thank you.”

*****

At the same time as Nathalie was making her way back to the Agreste house after the latest fight, her adversaries were sitting on a rooftop, watching the clouds grow darker and knowing they would be able to transform and swing away to shelter in a hurry if need be. For the moment, they were content to sit with their backs against the access door, out of view from the street, and catch their breaths. Tikki and Pollen sat nearby on the peeling metal railing around the edge of the roof; both kwaamis and holders snuggled up together against the cold.

“I think we should watch my house,” Adrien said.

Marinette looked up at him as best she could with her head on his shoulder. “Hmm?”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said. “Since, you know...we've been wondering. About them.” It still wasn’t easy to talk about, and watching Marinette’s look of drowsy contentment give way to a nervous, watching-every-word sort of expression - the same one she always brought to this conversation - almost made it worse. He looked out over the rooftops as he went on. “Maybe we could watch the house right after akuma attacks to see if Madame Malheur comes back there.”

Marinette lifted her head. “Bring in one of the temporary heroes to watch, you mean? You and I can’t leave fights early.”

“No.” Adrien shook his head to punctuate the statement. “It’s probably best not to bring them in on our suspicions until we have more proof. Maybe once or twice I could be ‘unavailable,’ and you could get one of them to help while I watched.”

Neither of them noticed the kwaamis approaching until Pollen spoke up. “Adrien, are you trying to take yourself out of the fight again?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, Pollen, I’m certain,” he said, trying not to sound irritated, although he was far more irritated than certain. “Remember that I know Alya and Nino in civilian life. I don’t want them to get weird around me too - make sure to be extra nice to Adrien, his father might be Hawkmoth!”

His voice rose in volume slightly at the end, and he checked himself as he realized it. He didn’t know where that had come from. 

“‘ _ Too? _ ’” Marinette queried. 

“No, I mean…” Adrien ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean anything. Yeah, we could have one of them watch.” A raindrop landed on his forehead, then another on his wrist. He only half noticed.

Marinette placed a hand on his arm. “Adrien,” she began, gently.

“Please don’t,” he said, and stood. Marinette’s hand dropped back to her side. More raindrops were falling now. “We should be getting home. We can talk about this another time.”

Marinette watched from her sitting position, Tikki on her shoulder and her pigtails beginning to droop as the rain soaked them, as Adrien called on Pollen to transform him. As soon as the light faded, he was off across the rooftops, already beginning to cool off and berate himself in his head for the way the conversation had gone, and dreading the return to a house that was empty except for two might-be-supervillains, and trying not to think about the wounded look in Marinette’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're heading rapidly toward the parts of this story that I'm most excited for. I'm hyped.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry for another missed update last week - things have been crazy lately, which I'm sure I don't need to explain because they've likely been crazy for you too, and for the same reasons. Have a longer-than-usual chapter with good communication and juicy plot points to take your mind off the chaos that is global society right now.

Ladybug sat on a rooftop across from Adrien’s bedroom window and looked at the warped shapes of buildings reflected in the glass. Adrien would be home now, if she wasn’t mistaken. Probably, if he looked, he would see her sitting there dithering about whether or not to approach. She didn’t know exactly what was going on in his mind, but his words the previous afternoon had given her an intimation of it, and she wanted to make it right; but she could very well be the last person he wanted to see right now.

It had certainly seemed that way at school earlier. They had exchanged polite greetings in the morning, but nothing more, and he hadn’t even looked at her during class. Alya had dragged her aside under the gymnasium stairs at lunch to demand answers on what was going on: “All of a sudden you’re talking to him all the time, and you don’t tell me how, and now you’re giving each other the silent treatment? Girl, what on earth is happening?”

The behavior that might have seemed pushy or overbearing to some amused Marinette - there was a reason they were such good friends, after all - but she couldn’t very well explain, so she had brushed off the questions with explanations as brief and vague as she could possibly give.

In the end, it was the thought of what might happen in a fight if tension continued to run high that prompted Ladybug to swing over from the roof to the side of the Agreste mansion. For the sake of their working partnership, this needed to be addressed. She balanced on tiptoe along one of the metal ridges between the panes to the one that Adrien always left open in decent weather, and peered in to see him at his desk with his back to the window, scribbling away at what looked like their chemistry homework for the next day. Ladybug tapped on the frame to announce herself before jumping down and landing on the floor.

Adrien turned in his chair and stood up. To her surprise, he gave her a rueful grin and an awkward little wave. “Uh, hi Ladybug.”

“Tikki, spots off.” Marinette approached him with her kwaami following. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah…” Adrien shuffled his feet, not quite meeting her eyes. “Yeah, we do. Look, I’m really sorry for how I talked to you yesterday.”

“Huh?” Marinette frowned. “Wait, no. I came to apologize to  _ you _ .”

Adrien looked straight at her in surprise. “Oh. I, uh...it’s okay.”

Shaking her head, she took a step closer. “No, it’s not. I want to support you in the best way that I can, and what I’ve been doing hasn’t been helpful. How can I help?”

Adrien went to his bed and sat down on the edge, and Marinette followed suit. He opened his mouth and shut it again a couple of times as though trying out different words and deciding against them at the last minute. “I guess…” he said finally. “I guess I don’t only want to be supported. I mean, this is really hard and really scary, and I’m so glad to have you - that’s not what I mean. But you don’t need to treat me like I’m about to break down at any moment. I want to know that you still trust me to be a capable teammate and help you too.”

Marinette paused, considering. It made a lot of sense. Of course it would sting to be coddled too much, especially when she knew he still felt guilty for losing the black cat miraculous. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry that I made you feel that way,” she said. “Of course I believe that you’re capable of handling this maturely. I just...know that you can be really self-sacrificing, and I wanted to make extra sure that you know you don’t have to bottle things up and pretend you’re fine if you’re not. I can see how it sounded wrong.” She turned her head to look up at him. “Forgive me?”

He smiled. “Of course I forgive you, bugaboo.”

His hand found hers as they held eye contact, and their fingers laced together. Marinette tensed in surprise and anticipation as he leaned his face toward hers, but a moment later he drew back and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Do you have anywhere to be? You could...stay for a bit, and play video games, or...something?”

Marinette had to giggle at his awkwardness, even as she wondered what had happened a second ago. “Sure! Aren’t you worried about your dad catching us, though?”

“He’s upstairs with Nathalie. They’re going through some of my mom’s old clothes and putting them in storage.”

“Oh.” Marinette sat on her hands as Adrien got up and started setting up a game. “That’s, um…”

Adrien looked back over his shoulder at her, a smile on his face. “It’s okay, I think it’s good. Of course we still miss her, but he needs to move on eventually.”

*****

Upstairs at that moment, Nathalie was smoothing down the material of a plum-purple dress, sleeveless, with layers of tulle under the skirt to give it volume. It was an unusual color for Emilie - not that it wouldn’t have suited her, few things didn’t, but she had always favored light colors as a rule. Nathalie didn’t think she had ever seen her wearing this before.

Behind her, Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees and chin resting in his hands, an uncharacteristically slumped posture. They hadn’t been at the sorting for long, having only begun in midafternoon after finishing their office work for the day, but Nathalie realized it was an emotionally exhausting process for him. She resisted the urge to sit down next to him and put an arm around his hunched shoulders. 

When she turned back to the dress, hanging from the top of the wardrobe door, and resumed fluffing out the somewhat crumpled skirt (it had been crammed near the back), she noticed a dark stain near the hem. “Oh dear,” she said aloud. She knew she hadn’t caused that, but she could have sworn it hadn’t been there a moment before. Well, the fabric was dark enough, she could probably have missed it.

“What is it?” Gabriel asked.

“A stain,” Nathalie said, lifting the hem to get a closer look. It wasn’t stiff or crusty as if something had gotten on it; rather, the color seemed to have been drained from the fabric, leaving a black spot. “I’m not sure what it is.”

She heard the creak of the bed and Gabriel’s footsteps, and felt him lean over her shoulder to look. “Hmm. We can send it to be dry-cleaned.” He took a step back, and Nathalie turned her head to see him looking appraisingly between her and the dress. “It would suit you. You should keep it.”

Nathalie blinked, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “I couldn’t. It’s hers. And I’m taller anyway.”

Gabriel pursed his lips and continued looking at her, for what seemed to her a beat longer than necessary. “Very well, storage, then. I don’t think she ever cared for that one much.”

There was by now a pile of items set aside for storage, draped carefully over the back of an old burgundy-red wing chair - not a large pile, but it was progress that there was anything there at all, Nathalie reasoned. She plucked the hangar from the top of the wardrobe door and moved around it to add the plum dress to the pile, the tulle rustling as she moved. As she settled the dress on top of the others, trying not to wrinkle again what she had just smoothed down, she saw a folded piece of paper fall to the carpet. 

She bent to pick it up and held it out to Gabriel, not knowing what it was or how personal in nature it might be. He unfolded it almost absently, but when he set eyes on it, his eyebrows lifted and a look of astonishment came over him. 

“What is it?” Nathalie ventured.

He looked up at her with an all-too-familiar mad glint in his eyes and gestured for her to come closer, and Nathalie stepped in so she could see, her heart pounding in her throat. The paper was larger than she would have expected from seeing it folded, and covered in Emilie’s tiny precise writing. Nathalie didn’t immediately understand what she was looking at: jottings of strange symbols next to Latin characters, little charts reminiscent of her grade-school grammar classes, cryptic notations adorned with exclamation points or question marks.

“It’s a key,” Gabriel said in a voice drawn taut with amazement. “To the untranslated parts of the grimoire.”

*****

Half an hour later, back in the atelier, Gabriel was still pacing, muttering to himself with an almost manic excitement. Nathalie had settled back at her desk with a cup of tea and was getting a start on the next day’s work, keeping one eye on her employer in case he decided to do something drastic. She fully expected to be called to help if and when he decided to get started on the process of translation, but he would need to get the dramatics out of his system first. 

To be fair, Nathalie was excited too; she knew that the secret to repairing the peacock miraculous might be contained in the grimoire, and while her body continued to heal, she still saw Duusu’s mad eyes in her dreams sometimes and woke up with an unsettling feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Better to be safe than sorry when handling magic. And there might be other information too - other ways for them to gain an advantage on Ladybug and Yellowjacket. She simply preferred to wear her excitement on the inside.

The sound of her name jolted her out of her thoughts and she found Gabriel staring at her. “I sense a strong emotion.”

“Right.” Nathalie glanced down at the forms in front of her. “Go on, I need to finish this. I’ll join in five minutes.”

At that, the frantic aniating fervor seemed to drain out of Gabriel, practically shrinking him before her eyes. “You don’t have to,” he said, his brow furrowing in concern. “I only meant to let you know.”

She tried to reassure him with a smile. “How many times do I have to tell you that I want to help you?”

He didn’t look convinced, but nodded and turned away. She watched him vanish down through the floor, then turned to Plagg, who was sleeping on the corner of her desk, and poked him in the stomach. “Wake up. Gabriel needs us.”

Plagg groaned and rolled to face away from her, flopping one paw over his eyes.

“ _ Plagg. _ ”

“It’s not time to get up yet” - and what looked like green smoke puffed from his mouth. Fascinating. Had he been about to say his last holder’s name?

“It  _ is _ time to get up,” she insisted, a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “I’m just going to finish these and then we need to go.”

Plagg sat up with a yawn. Nathalie glanced over her shoulder and out the window: not raining today, but overcast, and if this morning was anything to go by, cold. She took another drink of her tea, but it had cooled off to nearly room temperature and wasn’t particularly bracing in the face of another long fight in such dreary weather. Luckily she had stronger things back at her apartment for that evening.

She looked down at her papers and picked up her pen. As she did, it broke - cracked right through to the ink reservoir, which promptly started leaking on her documents, even though she hadn’t used anything more than her normal grip. Plagg sniggered. Nathalie swore.

*****

Ladybug and Yellowjacket looked out from a subway entrance at the akuma, a large man in garish orange who was, for indiscernible reasons, forcing people to speak in rhyme. Yellowjacket glanced at his partner. “Can you hold him for a few minutes?”

They had discussed it during their video games earlier, so Ladybug knew what he meant. “Yeah, go.”

He sprang out of the entrance and took off in the direction of Master Fu’s apartment, giving the akuma a wide berth. Thankfully, it was less physically destructive than some, but there were cars stopped in the middle of the street, and a hubbub of car horns and the increasingly alarmed voices of people who found themselves unable to stop rhyming. Yellowjacket rolled his eyes as he ran; Plagg hadn’t been kidding that Hawkmoth was not the strategist of the villain team.

He detransformed near Master Fu’s and ran the rest of the way, sprang up the stairs two at a time, knocked on the door and didn’t wait for an answer before opening it. It looked like he had interrupted the guardian in the middle of stretches, because Fu was bent double with his hands on the floor. He straightened up with a groan. “Adrien. How can I help you?”

“I need Carapace,” Adrien panted. He wasn’t usually this short of breath after running, and wondered how much of it was nerves about what he might soon find out. “If that’s okay, master.”

Fu nodded slowly. “Of course.” He slipped the bracelet off his wrist and held it out to Adrien.

“Thank you, master!” And then it was off again, racing down the stairs, finding a dim alley to transform, and then setting out in search of Nino. 

He didn’t like leaving Ladybug to fight alone; usually it was her going to seek out the temporary heroes while he held off the enemy. To his relief, it didn’t take long to find Nino. He was at home, alone in his room with headphones on. It took almost a full minute of insistent knocking at the window before he looked up and rushed to let the hero in, holding one ear of his headphones away from his head. “Dude! Do you need me to fight?”

Yellowjacket scrambled through the window; it was a tight fit and he got through and into a standing position rather ungracefully. “Actually,” he said, straightening up, “we have another task for you.”

“Yeah?” Nino pulled his headphones down to rest around his neck.

Yellowjacket gulped. “It’s very important that you don’t tell  _ anyone _ else about this,” he warned, “because we aren’t sure yet. You’re the only person besides me and LB to hear about it.” He hesitated, seeing Nino’s anticipation. “We have a suspicion about the location from which the villains are operating, and we need you to watch to see if Madame Malheur goes back there after the battle. LB and I have never had any luck following her, but we might be able to catch her this way, if that’s where she’s based, and if she’s careless enough not to detransform farther away.” He didn’t bet on that, but, well, it was a possibility. “Your job is  _ only _ to watch and report,  _ not _ to confront her if you see her. Stay out of sight. Can I trust you?”

“Absolutely, Yellowjacket!” Nino looked like he was bursting with excitement, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Where am I going?”

The crucial question. Yellowjacket rubbed at the back of his neck. “Do you know where Gabriel Agreste lives? The fashion designer?”

Nino’s smile slid off his face and he stood still, his demeanor drooping. “Oh.” He fidgeted with the cord of his headphones as he went on. “Yeah, I know...his son Adrien is my best bud. You don’t think he’s…?”

With an effort, Yellowjacket held his friend’s gaze. In the pregnant pause he caught the faint shrill hum of Nino’s music still playing through his headphones. “Like I said, we aren’t sure. But it is a possibility.”

Nino looked down at his sneakers. “Man...Adrien would be crushed.”

A shout came from the street, and with it came the awareness that Yellowjacket had a partner and a fight to get back to. He held out the bracelet to Nino, who took it and slipped it on, with a distant, worried look in his eyes. Yellowjacket spoke past a lump in his throat. “I’m sure he would. But we need to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I have no interest in or talent for creating original akumas?


	14. Chapter 14

Gabriel had lingered in his lair after the end of the battle; Nathalie was already entering the atelier - holding a takeout box from a nearby cafe, for some reason - when he emerged from the lift. Immediately, she caught his eye, and beckoned him over to her end of the room with a small frown as she set the box on her desk.

“Look there,” she said, pointing out the window, but gesturing with her other hand for him to stop where she was, a couple of meters away from the wall. “Don’t be obvious about it.”

He followed the line of her finger and caught a flash of vivid green, visible for just a moment around the edge of a chimney on a nearby rooftop before it disappeared again. The color and Nathalie’s manner gave Gabriel a suspicion, but he hadn’t gotten enough of a look to be sure, so he shot her a questioning look.

“Carapace,” she said matter-of-factly, turning back to her desk.

Gabriel frowned and clasped his hands behind his back. “Is he watching us?”

“I think so.” Nathalie smoothed the front of her blazer and sat down primly. On the outside she looked perfectly collected, but the simmering tension that he could always sense from her these days was stronger than usual, and there was a slight edge in her voice when she spoke. “I don’t know what could have raised their suspicions.”

Gabriel’s heartbeat thumped in the hollow of his throat. “He didn’t see you transformed?” 

Nathalie glanced up at him, and he swallowed, immediately feeling abashed for doubting her caution. “No,” she said flatly. “He didn’t. And I gave myself an alibi.” She tapped the takeout box.

Swearing to himself under his breath, Gabriel turned and made to return to his podium, but before he made it all the way there, an impulse he couldn’t explain had him pivoting again and coming back to stand in front of Nathalie’s desk, leaning over her computer monitor to look at her. “We need to do something to throw them off the trail, wherever they picked it up,” he said.

Nathalie had been tapping the fingers of her left hand on the desk, but she stilled them, apparently with some effort. “Could someone who knows about the miraculous have seen the grimoire and traced it to you, the time Adrien’s classmate took it from him?”

“That was months ago. Why now?” Gabriel let out a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. Nathalie gave him what looked like an attempt at an encouraging smile, but it came off weak; he suspected she was thinking along the same lines as he was, wondering where they could have slipped up, and fearing the consequences of surveillance. Despite her palpable anxiety, though, she maintained her pragmatism, her determination to handle whatever happened calmly, no matter their feelings about it. Like always, it steadied him to talk to her, drew him back from the catastrophizing and the emotional extremes to which he was so prone.

She smoothed down the lock of hair that hung over her forehead, and the movement brought Gabriel’s mind back to the present moment. “I don’t know why now,” she said, holding his gaze.

He looked away from her, out the window at the chimney behind which Carapace was still invisible, as his mind grappled with the situation. “What is it going to take to deflect their suspicions? They’ve seen me akumatized, they” - and he faltered at the memory, which was still a painful reminder of his imperfect control over the consequences of his actions, even months later - “they’ve seen an akuma put Adrien in danger...what more can we do to convince them I couldn’t be Hawkmoth?” 

“You could try  _ not _ being Hawkmoth,” Plagg interjected flippantly, and Gabriel and Nathalie fixed him with identical frowns.

“Well,” Nathalie said slowly. Her fingers resumed their tapping, and her eyes narrowed slightly, taking on the look she used when a new and not yet fully formed idea was coming to her. “You may not like it, but there is something else we could try.”

*****

The heroes saw Carapace approaching from some distance away, and Yellowjacket, unable to resist, ran to meet him and tugged him by the arm into a shadowed opening between two shops. “Well?” he said, skidding to a halt in front of him with Ladybug close on his heels. “Did you see anyone?”

Carapace grinned ruefully and shook his head. “Not a trace of Madame Malheur. Just M. Agreste’s assistant coming back with takeout food.”

Yellowjacket and Ladybug glanced at each other, then back at their friend. “Thanks, Carapace,” Yellowjacket said, reaching as he so often did to twist his ring on his finger, then letting his hands drop to his sides when he felt its absence.

“Anytime, dude. Let me know if you need me to try again. I really hope it’s not him, though,” Carapace said, shaking his head. “Wayzz, shell off.” With a flash of light, he transformed back into Nino. “I gotta go.”

“Of course,” Ladybug said, and took the bracelet when Nino offered it. “We’ll be in touch.”

Nino gave them finger guns and started to step out of the alley without looking, only to leap back at the sound of a bell and an indignant shout as a cyclist nearly flattened him. He shot a sheepish look back at the heroes, who were muffling laughter, then looked exaggeratedly both ways and disappeared around the corner.

A short quiet fell between the two who were left behind, with only the background noise of traffic and the voices of passersby. The street was crowded, the light just beginning to turn warmer in color as the sun slipped close to the boundary between late afternoon and early evening.

“So?” Ladybug said to her partner. “What do you think?”

Yellowjacket considered. “It makes sense,” he said. “Nathalie stays in the house for meals more often, but she goes out enough that it wouldn’t be too strange to think she did today. There’s a cafe she sometimes goes to that isn’t too far from the house, and the akuma attack was pretty nearby. She could have gotten stuck there.”

He wasn’t fully convinced by his own words, and judging by the appraising look Ladybug gave him, she could tell. Thankfully she refrained from pushing any further, instead opting to ask, “Do you think we should try again?” 

“It couldn’t hurt.” Yellowjacket turned his head and looked out at the people hurrying past on the sidewalk a few yards away. None of them seemed to have noticed the heroes; all were too absorbed in their own conversations and destinations. “Once or twice, maybe.”

“All right.” He could feel Ladybug’s eyes on him, but she was clearly making an effort to keep her voice free of the cautious, over-gentle tone that he had found so grating. He turned to smile at her.

And if Nino, over the next couple of days, forced just a bit more cheer into his manner when he talked to Adrien at school, and avoided the subject of his father with more or less clumsy subject changes, Adrien didn’t mind too much. As far as Nino was concerned, his best friend had no idea of the questions being raised about his family. And Adrien was more than willing to play the part.

*****

Duusu whooped as soon as she materialized out of her brooch, and started flying dizzyingly fast circles around her wielder, a turquoise meteor in the dimness of the lair. “Miss Nathalie! I’m so glad to see you!”

“I’m glad to see you too, Dusuu.” Nathalie smiled with all the warmth she could muster at the blue kwaami as she pressed her palm over the brooch on her chest. The first time she had used it, not knowing what to expect, she had assumed that the tingling ache working its way between her ribs and into her chest and the restless, alien energy in her limbs were part of the package of handling magic. The contrast between the two miraculous hadn’t been fully salient until she put the ring aside for the moment and donned the brooch again. Nathalie felt goosebumps rise on her arms at the new, inexplicable uncanniness of the familiar sensation.

She didn’t let anything show on her face. Hawkmoth was standing a bit closer than necessary, looking down at her in worry, and visibly tense, as though expecting her to fall at any moment and need to be caught. He had taken a half-hour to convince after she explained her plan, and then stalled for three long, akuma-free days, absorbing himself with working on the grimoire and acting as though he couldn’t put it aside for a moment, despite the fact that Emilie’s incomplete notes had yielded very little fruit so far. It had taken this long before he finally sensed an emotion with so much potential that he couldn’t let it pass. Nathalie knew a wrong word or look on her part would bring the whole plan to a halt at once - and they couldn’t afford that.

So she smiled at Duusu, and let the kwaami nestle into the crook of her neck and shoulder with a contented hum when she temporarily exhausted her energy. Nathalie stroked her feathers with one finger and smiled at Hawkmoth, a smile meant to say  _ it’s okay, I’m okay, I’m not afraid _ . His frown only deepened in response.

There was no sense in putting off the moment any longer. Nathalie took a deep breath, and Duusu, picking up on what was about to happen, sprang from her shoulder and did a string of backflips in mid-air. A fond smile, genuine this time, tugged at Nathalie’s lips. “Duusu, spread my feathers.”

Color flashed around her, fizzling on her skin like carbonated light, and then her mind was unfolding outwards, her thoughts sounding small, like a voice in an empty space too large to echo; though she had felt it many times before, her stomach knotted with fear. The color faded. She felt Hawkmoth’s grip on her upper arm. The sun through the rose window fell painfully bright on her eyes. Once again, she was bigger than herself, her consciousness standing at the center of a vast dim space with the emotions of others surrounding her like small lights. She shook her head and came back to herself. 

Before Hawkmoth could say anything, she took a step back, tugging her arm gently out of his grip, then snapped open her fan and plucked a feather from it. As soon as she filled it with energy and pressed it into the coin she held in her other hand, the background noise of countless emotions faded away and she sensed only her own unease and determination, echoing back to her oddly through the magical link. She caught her partner’s eye across the top of the fan. “Are you ready, Hawkmoth?”

He nodded silently. Tension showed in his jaw and the lines of his shoulders.

Mayura stretched out her hands, holding an image in her mind that she knew well, perhaps better than she had any right to know it. The sentimonster took shape quickly, just at the edge of the pool of light from the window; Hawkmoth turned away from her to watch it form. With a last sweep of her hand, the deep blue energy surrounding her creation dissipated, leaving, standing half in shadow, a perfect copy of Gabriel Agreste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between a lighter schedule due to classes being reformatted for online, and the fact that we're approaching the parts of this story I've been most excited about since the beginning (the next chapter is going to be a doozy!), I might be updating somewhat more often than once a week moving forward, for my own pleasure if nothing else. I do hope this story can bring smiles to a few faces in a stressful time - it certainly makes me happier knowing that people are reading it.


	15. Chapter 15

After she finished instructing the sentimonster and watched it vanish down the lift on its way out of the house (a strange feeling, to see the real Hawkmoth and what looked for all the world like Gabriel standing side by side, though not, she imagined, as strange as it was for Hawkmoth himself), Mayura detransformed. She accepted her employer’s offered stabilizing arm before she spoke the phrase, but to her surprise, it was barely needed. Her legs shook, a few coughs scraped their way up her throat, and then her lungs relaxed, the colored spots in her vision receded, and she gulped in air and let go of Hawkmoth’s arm. His hand came to rest tentatively on the small of her back instead. Duusu raced through the air around them, unheeded by either.

As the physical symptoms receded, though, she felt chills run up her neck and suddenly her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear it thumping in her ears. She stiffened, breathing rapidly.  _ Danger, danger, danger _ . Around her, as if reacting to her spike of fear, butterflies rose up from the floor in a skittish silvery-white mass.

“Nathalie?” Hawkmoth’s voice was alarmed, and she realized that she had pressed close to him instinctively, and that her fight-or-flight stance had to be apparent to him. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths, and the strange moment of panic eased just as the coughing and dizziness had before it. 

“I’m fine,” she said, responding to the unspoken question in the angle of Hawkmoth’s mouth and the furrow of his brow. Though she would never admit it, fear was always a presence at her side when she used the peacock - the image of Emilie lying still in her glass coffin as a result of using that same artifact was much too immediate. Though it had never struck her in quite that way before. She clasped her hands to keep them from trembling and tried to shake off the uncanny feeling that she was being warned of something.

Hawkmoth turned her to face him, the hand that had been on her back sliding around to settle at her waist as he placed the other on her shoulder. “Are you  _ absolutely _ sure about this?” he asked, leaning in close to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. Closer than he needed to be, she thought, and then dismissed the thought with all it might imply, as she had dismissed so many others in recent months. He trusted her enough that he wasn’t worried about being misinterpreted. That was all. “If you aren’t well, I can go alone.”

Nathalie resisted the urge to sigh. They had been over all this before. “I need to go too. If they see me there, as Madame Malheur, they will be less likely to suspect a sentimonster.”

“They know that sentimonsters can persist after the peacock holder detransforms,” he pointed out - another objection he had already raised, and Nathalie gave the same answer as before.

“Since we  _ are _ Hawkmoth and Madame Malheur, there will always be gaps in our defense. This minimizes them.”

Hawkmoth glared, but not at her, she could tell. The hand at Nathalie’s waist pulled her closer, and he rested his forehead against hers for a moment. “Be careful,” he said, voice sharp in the way that she knew masked anxiety. He let go and stepped back. “I’ll follow in a few minutes, like we agreed.”

There was a spooked look in his eyes, and for the first time, Nathalie wondered if whatever had triggered her fight-or-flight instinct a moment ago had affected him, too. But no, that had only been her own nerves. She turned, once again stirring up butterflies from their resting places around her feet. One grazed past her jaw, tickling her. She looked back over her shoulder as she reached the lift. “I’ll be fine,” she promised again, and was gone.

*****

The latest akuma was less cartoonish than Hawkmoth’s usual style, but one glance at the swath of carnage told Yellowjacket that it would be a dangerous one - and a look sideways at his partner, staring down from their perch with a tense jaw and narrowed eyes, told him she had reached the same conclusion. They had seen the news report before they heard the commotion, and came in knowing what to expect: a businessman who had snapped after his efforts at honest and generous management had gotten him defrauded and trampled over one too many times, and was now out on a rampage, tearing through the sides of office buildings, crushing expensive cars, and turning their occupants into silver statues. It wasn’t the most threatening power set that they had faced - Yellowjacket always feared another akuma designed specifically to target miraculous holders - but its sheer destructive ferocity was intimidating all the same.

The heroes dropped down to street level, landing with a crunch on a carpet of shattered glass, a scant ten yards from the raging akuma, who they now saw looked surprisingly normal, in a black-and-white suit with solid silver eyes. Across from them, balancing impossibly on a narrow decorative ledge running around the outside of a building, perched the familiar form of Madame Malheur. When she saw them, she sprang lightly down and landed on the opposite sidewalk with a smirk.

“Civilians,” Ladybug warned, gesturing through the broken front window of the ornate lobby next to which they had landed, at a group, mostly of well-dressed businesspeople, huddled against the back wall. Yellowjacket glanced in through the window as Ladybug turned out toward the street, spinning her yo-yo defensively. Then looked again, feeling like his heart had stopped as he processed the sight of a familiar figure, standing head and shoulders above most of the others. “Father?”

Ladybug gave him a sharp look, almost losing the rhythm of her spinning. “Are you sure?” 

“Of course!” he exclaimed, already moving for the opening, but Ladybug grabbed his upper arm. The brief hindrance was enough for his mind to catch up to him. Right. Identity. Couldn’t risk giving away who his civilian self was associated with. He turned away with an effort, throwing one last worried look over his shoulder before stepping up beside Ladybug and scanning the scene in front of them. On the other side of the street, the akuma victim had paused similarly, next to Madame Malheur and seemingly at her signal. The four stared each other down across the minefield of crushed cars and broken glass between them, each waiting for the other side to make a move.

Then movement and a flash of purple caught Yellowjacket’s eye from halfway up a fire escape some distance down the street. His heart lurched again at the sight of Hawkmoth, present in the flesh and apparently unaware of having been seen as yet.  _ Great _ . He wasn’t as cunning a fighter as Madame Malheur, but they really didn’t need more brute strength against them. 

“Hey, LB?” Yellowjacket said, trying not to draw attention to the fact that he had spotted the new arrival. “We’ve got a problem.”

*****

Madame Malheur noticed the heroes’ momentary distraction, and it was enough for her to leap at them, making it halfway across the street before they even realized she was moving, and gesture at the same time for the akuma to attack. The heroes barely had time to duck behind Ladybug’s shield to protect themselves from the initial strike, and then take off running in the direction that she had forced them to take: straight towards Hawkmoth. He had lost the element of surprise, but it would do. 

When Hawkmoth leapt out of hiding and joined the fray, giving Madame Malheur a self-satisfied grin as he did, the heroes turned to try to hold their ground, but it soon became apparent that they were struggling. They fought back fiercely, but only landed a few blows, and the strength of their three opponents combined forced them on the defensive. Yard by yard, they were pushed backwards down the street. 

This fight might have been the villains’ bid to protect their identities more than a serious attempt at the miraculous, but perhaps they would kill two birds with one stone after all; Madame Malheur guessed that something similar was in Hawkmoth’s mind too as they caught each other’s eyes gloatingly. Then it was the heroes’ turn to exploit a moment of distraction. They leapt away, Yellowjacket to one side and Ladybug to the other, swinging up toward the rooftops. Hawkmoth swore and went after Yellowjacket.

Madame Malheur followed Ladybug, making it in three quick bounds up to the top of an office building that had been under construction for some months and was now nearly finished. She could use that. The possibilities of an empty building and a well-placed cataclysm lit up for her in an instant.

One section of the building was a couple of stories higher than the other, and Ladybug was on the lower part of the roof, backed up against the wall and faltering as she tried to figure out how to make a run for it without getting caught by her opponent. Cataclysm that wall behind her, with a shove at the same time to push her through, and she would be trapped by the collapse of those top two stories.

Madame Malheur leapt forward, calling on her cataclysm in the same moment. Pain lanced through her body from her left hand. The roof underneath her crumbled, and there was a cry from Ladybug and another that might have been her own, and the cracking, grinding sound of walls giving way, and she fell.

*****

It was pitch-black. Ladybug squirmed under the rubble. A heavy beam lay across her back, and her stomach was pressed into something pointed like the corner of a board; her foot was caught somewhere and she couldn’t move it. She scrabbled at the slanted surface - a piece of drywall, maybe - under her hands, but the weight pinning the rest of her body was too much even for her enhanced strength, enough that it would surely have crushed her without the protection of her suit.

She thanked her stars that she hadn’t yet used her lucky charm. If she detransformed here, it would be over for her.

A groaning and cracking noise sounded above her, and she closed her eyes just in time to shield them from the debris as a pile of drywall and glass and twisted metal crashed down just in front of her. When she opened them again, light was pouring down on her, sparkling on a fog of dust motes that gradually began to settle. The light and the dust made Ladybug’s eyes water. She blinked and rubbed at them.

When she could see again, she looked across the fresh heap of debris and saw Madame Malheur, similarly pinned, with one arm trapped, and from what little Ladybug could see, her spine twisted in what had to be an uncomfortable position. Their eyes met. The older woman remained composed, but her gaze was absent its usual cool, predatorial character, and it was like an acknowledgement passed between them. For the moment, they were equally trapped.

From somewhere out of sight came Yellowjacket’s voice. “Ladybug? Ladybug!”

“Here!” she rasped, but the pressure on her lungs made it hard to get a full breath, let alone shout.

Madame Malheur had turned her gaze up to what Ladybug presumed must be a hole overhead. Ladybug herself, pinned on her stomach, settled for looking across at her opponent. What had happened a moment ago? She had never seen Chat Noir lose control of his cataclysm, and yet the flash of black around Madame Malheur and the look of shock on her face as the rooftop crumbled right under her feet made Ladybug sure that that was exactly what had happened.

“Ladybug!” came Yellowjacket’s distant shout again.

“Here!” she repeated, not at all confident that her hoarse voice would reach him. She inhaled dust and sneezed.

The thuds of footsteps came from overhead, and then a tall purple-clad figure dropped from above and landed directly in front of Ladybug. The little breath in her lungs left them in a rush and she felt clammy with horror. She gave a fierce but unavailing wriggle, trying to free herself, as she strained to look up at Hawkmoth.

But Hawkmoth wasn’t gloating, and more importantly, wasn’t reaching for her earrings; he was looking around frantically, barely seeming to notice his enemy and his one goal lying helpless at his feet. And Ladybug understood.

“Behind you,” she gasped.

Hawkmoth locked eyes with her in surprise before whirling around and scrambling over the rubble toward Madame Malheur, stirring up dust as he went. The debris half-hid the villains from Ladybug’s view but she saw Hawkmoth crouch and cup Madame Malheur’s cheek with one gloved hand, saying something Ladybug couldn’t hear, before setting to shoving the rubble aside. It only took him a few seconds to free his partner and scoop her up bridal-style. Ladybug thought she heard her say “I’m all right” as Hawkmoth started to carry her away.

Ladybug craned her neck to watch them disappear over the rim of the hole. A moment later, her own partner dropped down atop the pile of debris and rushed to free her. “Ladybug, there you are! I saw Hawkmoth coming from here,” he said as he started pushing at the beams. “He didn’t see you?” He glanced around the confined space.

“No, he…” Ladybug gulped air as the weight on her back lifted. She twisted around to free her foot from between a cinder block and a piece of rebar. “He did see me.”

“And he didn’t take your earrings?” Yellowjacket’s face scrunched up in confusion as he reached down to help Ladybug to her feet. She stood, wincing. Good thing they were moving past shorts weather - she would have bruises all over from the ribs down.

“No,” she said, looking up at the spot where the villains had disappeared. “He just wanted to get to Madame Malheur. He didn’t even care about me.”

“And you’re okay otherwise?”

Ladybug nodded, running her hands down her sides to feel out some of the bruises. “Your father? The akuma?”

“Father’s safe,” Yellowjacket said, and started to scramble up the sloped sides of the hole they were in, gesturing for Ladybug to follow. “That group of civilians got out when the thick of the fighting moved away from them. And the akuma’s gone.”

“What?” Ladybug frowned. “You didn’t break the object and let it go?”

Yellowjacket pulled himself up over the edge of the hole onto the top of the collapsed office building. Ladybug followed, taking his outstretched hand, and not letting go of it when she stood beside him. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “As soon as the building fell, the akuma flew out of that man’s watch and turned white again.”

“Hawkmoth recalled it,” Ladybug murmured. “When he saw that his partner was in danger.”

“I think they’re a bit more than partners in crime, if you ask me,” said Yellowjacket with a grin, beginning to pick his way down toward street level. Ladybug hummed thoughtfully and followed him. It was a long way down, and as she went she kept bumping her already abused legs and ribs, drawing hisses of pain that made her partner pause and give her a worried glance each time. At last they made it down to the street and moved back from the rubble so that they would be out of the way when it reassambled itself. 

Ladybug sent her yo-yo spinning up into the air, and a wave of red flowed out from it, righting the destroyed office building and repairing the damage to those around it in a moment. She sighed and offered the usual fist bump to her partner. “I have to go,” she said. “But we’ll talk soon.” 

Yellowjacket nodded solemnly. “Yeah,” he said. “Soon.”

*****

Madame Malheur wrapped her arms around Hawkmoth’s neck and pressed her face into the front of his shoulder as he ran across the rooftops, having made a couple of weak protests that she could run on her own and been ignored. After a time, she felt him slow, and looked up, to see that they were nearing the mansion.

“Carapace?” she asked faintly.

He looked around, having apparently slowed down for that very reason. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Maybe we should” - but Hawkmoth was already resuming his course toward the mansion. A few more leaps brought them to the roof and down through the rose window into the lair. Hawkmoth set her back on her feet, but kept a steadying arm wrapped around her as they both detransformed.

“Nathalie,” he said, looking at her without a hint of his usual rigidity. “I could have lost you.” His grip tightened on her waist. “Forgive me. I should never have agreed to this." His face was much too close, his eyes dark in the shadows falling over his face, and his gaze never left hers. Butterflies, disturbed by their sudden entrance, filled the air around them.

“But you didn’t lose me,” she said quietly. Gabriel’s expression shifted, and somehow Nathalie realized what was about to happen a split second before it did; and then his hand was on her jaw and his lips were on hers. She closed her eyes, feeling a rush of heat to her cheeks and her heart pounding. Gabriel pulled her closer and made a soft sound in his throat.

It only lasted a few seconds. For a moment after they parted, they held still, their faces still just inches from each other; then Nathalie shifted so that she could look up and meet Gabriel's eyes. As if her movement had jolted him awake, he let her go and lurched backward so sharply that she was almost unbalanced, the tender expression on his face morphing into alarm. Nathalie looked down at the floor as guilt and anxiety began to congeal in her stomach. A tight sensation wrapped around her temples like oncoming tears. 

“Nathalie. I am so sorry,” he said, talking just a little too fast. She forced herself to look straight at him. “That was incredibly inappropriate of me. I shouldn’t have…”

Nathalie swallowed and shook her head as he trailed off. “Don’t worry. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked to the lift. Gabriel didn’t speak or try to follow. As soon as she was safely out of his sight, she pressed her palms to her still-flushed cheeks and shut her eyes. She had long since made peace with the fact that she loved him, but she told herself it was a disinterested, noble sort of love; reciprocation wasn’t something she thought about, or was even aware of hoping for, until that moment. But as she leaned against the wall of the lift, she realized with a rush of self-loathing that she had never been that selfless.

She emerged into the atelier and made for the door, not wanting to risk seeing Gabriel again until the next morning at least, and not wanting to spend a moment longer than necessary under the gaze of Emilie's portrait. As she stepped out into the hall, she could no longer hold back tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I ever looking forward to reading the comments on this one.
> 
> Unrelatedly, fight choreography is the absolute worst.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, so much for updating more frequently - I meant to have this done days ago, but some personal stuff got in the way, and I struggled with making all the introspection engaging and true to character. I don't know how well I succeeded on that last part. But at any rate, here, have some aftermath of what went down last chapter.

As Nathalie fumbled with the key to her apartment, she felt her phone vibrate in her purse, once, then twice more in close succession as she got the door open and stepped inside. She pulled it out to look as she stepped out of her shoes at the door. It was, as she had suspected and rather dreaded, the group text she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave, with three other women in similar lines of work to her own. She had lost count of how many years ago the four of them had started talking. There was a certain kind of kinship in being the practical, long-suffering organizers behind important and temperamental people, after all - the perfect setup for friendships to form under said employers’ noses, and often at their expense.

**Hi girls!** Cecilia had said. **Haven’t seen you all in a while. Drinks tonight?**

Penny and Saranya had already given their enthusiastic agreement. Nathalie sighed and set the phone on the coffee table, then made her way around the apartment closing curtains and turning on lights. She came back, picked it up and stared at the screen until it started to go dim, at which point she tapped it to keep it awake.

She liked the company of the other assistants, she really did. In years past, before Emilie ever said anything about a trip to Tibet - and even sometimes afterwards, before things at the mansion took a sharp turn for the worse - they had shared quite a few nights of laughter and commiseration over the ridiculous antics of their respective bosses. But the more her life, and her sources of stress, came to center around secrets that only she and Gabriel knew, the less relief she found in her conversations with her friends, and the quieter and more serious she became in the one context where she used to literally and metaphorically let her hair down. It had been...what, six months since she had attended one of their more or less monthly nights out? Seven?

She should change that, she mused, perching on the arm of the sofa and running her finger along the side of the phone, the screen of which had gone black. Surely they still had something in common to talk about. It would be fun.

But she knew, deep down, that it hadn’t been fun since the day Gabriel had first put on that infernal pin. Very little had. She could and did walk freely around the city, but at every level besides the physical, she was chained in the mansion - chained to the lair, the grimoire, the coffin, and Gabriel, to the point that the prospect of sitting in a club giggling over Jagged Stone’s latest caprices seemed utterly unreal. And her mind was still floundering in its efforts to process the events of that day’s battle, and the kiss she and Gabriel had shared barely twenty minutes before.

Half in spite of herself, she opened up her phone again and typed out a response.  **Sorry, I’m exhausted tonight. Next time for sure.** It was a lie, she knew. She hit send, not without a pang of sadness, put down her phone before she had to see her friends’ inevitable good-humored chiding, and went to change out of her work clothes and take her hair out of its bun. When she returned to the living room in leggings and sweatshirt, hair freshly brushed and falling halfway down her back, she went to the kitchenette to pour herself a glass of wine. Heaven knew she needed it.

Plagg laid on his back on the coffee table, staring at her upside-down, as she settled in the corner of the sofa with her glass. The sight of him brough one of her concerns to the front of her mind, and her left hand curled on her knee as it tingled with the echo of a searing pain. She hesitated before speaking. “Plagg?”

The kwaami blinked and made a non-committal mutter that sounded more or less like an assent. Nathalie took that as enough of a cue to proceed. “What happened earlier today, when I used my cataclysm?”

Plagg rolled over onto his stomach with a grunt so that he could see her the right way up. “Don’t know. I know what’s going on when you’re transformed, but if it’s confusing to you it isn’t any better for me.”

Nathalie frowned. She opened and closed her fist a few times, trying to rid it of the phantom pain, trying to remember. “It happened before I reached the wall I was aiming for…” She pressed her fingers to her temples. Leap. Pain. Grinding sounds. Falling. She had no read on her own movements between springing forward toward Ladybug and dropping through the crumbling roof. 

That pain. Once she had been startled while she had her head in a cupboard below her kitchen counter rummaging through the contents, and she had jerked upward and cracked her head on the top of the opening so hard she almost blacked out. It had been like that, but through her whole body instead of just her skull. Had she fallen? Or run into something that she didn’t see until she was already moving? 

The harder she tried to remember, the fuzzier those moments seemed. The gap in her memory left her unsettled. She was missing something, and whatever had happened, it certainly couldn’t be allowed to happen again. But she just couldn’t lay hold of what it was. And her kwaami, still sprawled on his stomach on the table and looking at her with half-closed eyes, was no help.

And after the building fell, Hawkmoth had ignored the absolutely helpless Ladybug to rescue her. And after  _ that _ …

Nathalie felt her face warm up again, and took a large swallow of her wine.

Unfortunately, her reaction did not escape Plagg’s notice, and he opened his eyes all the way and sat up. “Ooh, somebody’s blushing.”

“I’m not blushing,” Nathalie said, though she knew her face was betraying her.

Plagg smirked. “Sure looks like it to me. Humans may be weird, but I’ve been around enough of them to know lovesick when I see it.” When Nathalie didn’t respond immediately, his grin grew wider. “What’s the matter? Butterfly got your tongue?”

Nathalie groaned and drained the rest of her wine, not knowing if she wanted to shout at her kwaami or start crying again, or if her cheeks were going to catch fire before she had the chance to do either. She took a steadying breath and settled for silence, at least for as long as she could manage.

“Ya know,” Plagg went on, floating up into the air and hovering in front of her face with a mock-pensive expression. “This works out great! He falls in love with you, he stops terrorizing Paris, you get your happy ending and have a bunch of evil babies…”

“ _ No _ , Plagg,” Nathalie snapped. Her eyes were beginning to sting. She set her empty glass down hard on the coffee table. “He doesn’t - he was scared, when the building collapsed on me. It was the heat of the moment, that’s all.” She didn’t know why she felt the need to explain herself to the infuriating creature. Maybe it was just because his teasing stung deeper than he realized.

Plagg made an exaggerated kissing sound. “I don’t know, all the signs seem to point to” -

“NO!”

Nathalie pressed a hand to her mouth, her shout ringing in the air. Tears pooled in her eyes, making her vision blurry, and one spilled over and ran down her cheek. She moved her hand to brush it away. Plagg watched her, silenced by her outburst. “No,” she said, quieter. “He doesn’t love me. And even if he did start to, I couldn’t let him. He’s married. That’s why we’re doing all of this.”

Plagg stared a moment longer as more tears slid down her cheeks. Then, to her astonishment, he dropped his act.

“Are you really okay with it?” he asked. “Him never loving you back?”

Nathalie swallowed. That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? The question to which she had been so sure she knew the answer. “No,” she said, her voice clogged with tears, wondering how she had gotten to the point of confiding in her enemy’s kwaami who no more than tolerated her. “I thought I was. But I’ll have to learn how.” She plucked her glasses from her face and rubbed at her eyes with the other hand. “I want him to be happy again. That still comes first.”

Plagg, his capacity for emotional seriousness apparently depleted for the moment, didn’t ask the obvious question, but Nathalie’s own traitorous brain supplied it.  _ And what if  _ you _ could make him happy? _ But even if there wasn’t his promise to Emilie to consider, the shocked look on his face as he moved away from her after their kiss was enough of an answer, wasn’t it?

*****

As soon as Adrien made it to his house, he rushed for his father’s atelier. He’d seen him escape the battle zone, from a distance, his white suit jacket and graying head visible in the group of businesspeople who made a bid for safety when the villains moved away from their building and had vanished out of sight down another street. But there had been glass shards and metal and rubble all over, and Adrien had only gotten a short glimpse of him close-up, not enough to know if he was hurt.

He was almost to the atelier door, half-running, before realizing that he hadn’t received any calls or messages from his father or Nathalie, he hadn’t been told his father was going to be out of the house that day, and he himself certainly had no reason to be near the battle.  _ Yellowjacket _ had seen Gabriel Agreste in that office building;  _ Adrien _ had no idea.

He cast about for the nearest excuse to enter the atelier anyway, and remembered that he needed to talk to Marinette and didn’t want it to wait the whole weekend. That would do. He tried to steady his breathing as he walked up and tapped on the door.

“Come in,” came his father’s voice from inside, and Adrien let out a breath of relief as he opened the door.

“Hello, father,” he said, and glanced over at Nathalie’s desk, opening his mouth to say hello to her too, only to find her chair empty. He looked back toward the podium. “Where’s Nathalie?”

“She went home early today.” His father’s voice had an odd quality to it as he spoke, not just stern and impassive like usual, but tense, almost as if the mention of his assistant had upset him. His eyes darted around the room, not quite meeting his son’s.

“Is she not feeling well again?” Adrien asked, concerned. It seemed like her mysterious ailment had been getting better in recent weeks - coinciding closely with Mayura taking up the black cat miraculous, as it happened, but Adrien preferred to shelve that thought and be glad that she was healing.

His father pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, she’s - fine,” he said, in a cold tone that permitted no further prying. “Do you need something, Adrien?”

Adrien hesitated. His father looked surprisingly put together for having just been caught in the middle of a battle, but his hair was sticking up in all directions - almost as if he had been running his hands through it - and he looked distant and distracted. “Father, is everything all right?” he probed, trying not to make it obvious that he already knew what had happened.

His father frowned. “As a matter of fact, I was caught up in the akuma attack just now. There was a meeting in that part of town that I had to attend in person. I was unhurt, but it was not a pleasant experience.”

“Oh, wow,” Adrien said. “I saw the news report. It looked like a bad one. I’m glad you’re all right.” He got a stiff nod in response, and decided to venture on. “Actually, I came to ask...tomorrow is Saturday. Could I invite a friend over for the morning?”

“What friend?”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I’ve told you about her, she” -

“I remember.” Adrien didn’t miss the way his father looked over at Nathalie’s desk, as if for guidance, then back to his son. “Very well, you may invite her.”

“Thank you, father!” Adrien said, and backed out of the open door, pulling it shut behind him. Out in the hall, he allowed himself a grin so wide his cheeks ached. His father was fine and he was free to absorb the hopeful implications of what had happened. Pollen emerged from hiding, and he grinned at her, forgetting for a moment the ever-present sting of it not being Plagg he was talking to. “I saw Father and Hawkmoth at the same time!” he said, keeping his voice down with an effort. 

“That is good evidence in his favor,” Pollen said politely. Adrien’s smile slipped a little at the reminder, delivered in Pollen’s usual demure manner, that in a world of magic and illusions, there was always room for doubt...but he couldn’t  _ always _ be doubting, could he? Wasn’t there such a thing as  _ reasonable _ doubt? Surely what he had seen meant something better than “good.” 

“Yeah, it really is!” he said to Pollen, ignoring the implications, and started to make his way up toward his room, taking out his phone to call Marinette.

*****

When the door shut behind Adrien, Nooroo, who had ducked behind the podium, emerged and floated back up to Gabriel’s eye level, looking at him with wide expectant eyes. Gabriel frowned back, but he could tell from the fact that the timid Nooroo seemed entirely unbothered that his attempt to be stern looked as halfhearted as it felt. “Stop staring,” he said flatly.

“But, master…”

“My mind is disturbed. You mentioned.” Gabriel’s eyes had wandered to Nathalie’s desk once again. By the time he had snapped out of his shock and followed her down to the atelier, she and her purse were gone. He hadn’t called her or tried to follow further. Surely she needed space, after what he did.

“Maybe I could help?” Nooroo pressed, clearly taking advantage of the fact that his holder was too preoccupied to be sharp with him.

Gabriel glared. “My feelings are my business.”

“Yes, master,” Nooroo said, in a tone that suggested Gabriel had not heard the last of it. 

Still glaring, Gabriel turned to the portrait behind him, and for once hurried to open the safe behind it without stopping to look up into the painted eyes of his wife’s likeness. The emotions of the city nudged at the back of his mind, bringing the heady flavor of temptation with them. He could reach out and find Nathalie that very minute if he so chose. He pushed the thought aside angrily as he pulled out the grimoire; he had never invaded her privacy in such a way, and he wasn’t about to start now, especially after having already trespassed on her physical boundaries.

He didn’t know why he had done it, nor why he now found himself longing to know whether her eager response to the kiss or her wounded look afterwards was more representative of her true feelings. He pulled Emilie’s pages of notes from where it was tucked inside the front cover of the grimoire, unfolded it, and flipped to the page where he had last been working, aware that his movements were a bit more forceful than they needed to be, and trying to suppress the awareness that he was trying to distract himself. Day by day, more pencil jottings of translated words or phrases - heavily decorated with crossings-out and question marks - appeared in the book’s margins, but Gabriel lacked Emilie’s facility with linguistics at the best of times, and the notes she had left behind, consisting of much conjecture about word roots and only very incomplete details on the grammar and the complex script, were less helpful than he might have hoped.

His eyes ran down the page and stopped at a place where one of his notes had been crossed out and replaced by a different word in Nathalie’s small neat cursive. He sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. The image of Nathalie just before he had kissed her drifted back into his mind: one side of her face lit by the window and one side in shadow, a few stray hairs loose from her bun, her eyes wide and dilated and a blush discernable where the light struck her cheek.

This wouldn’t do. Gabriel slammed the grimoire shut on the mysterious writing that he was barely seeing anyway and turned back to Emilie’s portrait, reaching out for the buttons.

“Another akuma, master?” Nooroo asked, drooping visibly.

“No,” Gabriel snapped as he pressed his fingers to the right places on the painting. “I’m going to talk to my wife.”


	17. Chapter 17

For once in her life, Marinette had no trouble waking up early. After getting ready, gulping down a quick breakfast, and saying goodbye to her parents as she passed through the bakery, she caught a bus over to Adrien’s neighborhood, and walked the last block or two to the mansion. It was a bright, crisp morning, just chilly enough to prompt Marinette to add a pink scarf to her outfit, though she doubted she would want it by the time she left later in the morning. She fiddled with one end of it as she approached the gates.

She pressed the intercom and waited, but there was no response. She was about to try again when she heard footsteps behind her, turned, and looked up at the poised, suit-clad figure of Nathalie Sancoeur.

“Oh!” Marinette exclaimed. “Good morning, ma’am, I’m, um, just here to visit Adrien. He, um, he said he asked and it was… okay…” She barely noticed that she was shuffling backwards as she spoke.

Nathalie, though, was looking past her at the gates, clearly only half paying attention to Marinette. Once Marinette shut her mouth on her nervous chatter and realized that her presence wasn’t going to be questioned, she realized that the older woman’s face lacked its usual sternness, and there were shadows under her eyes that her makeup didn’t fully hide. “Yes, of course,” she said absently, punching a code into a keypad on the wall. The gates swung open to admit them. “Right this way.”

The pair crossed the courtyard in silence, and Nathalie ushered Marinette through the front doors. Once inside, she glanced around the room almost nervously. “I’ll go get Adrien,” she said. “I would be surprised if he was awake at this hour on a Saturday.”

Marinette flushed and looked down at the floor, listening to the tapping of Nathalie’s heels as she walked away. Of course, she had probably come too early. But they did _really_ need to talk about what had happened yesterday, and… well, she wanted to see her partner. That wasn’t a bad thing, was it?

She shouldn’t have worried, because Adrien came bounding down the stairs a minute later, dressed and grinning, having clearly been awake and expecting her. Nathalie followed with a slight smile on her face. “Hi, Marinette!” Adrien exclaimed.

“Hi, Adrien!” Marinette echoed, grinning right back at him. His joy was infectious, and it temporarily pushed the more serious side of the day’s business to the back of her mind.

“Shall we?” Adrien asked, and gestured to the stairs, but before either of them could go anywhere, the atelier door opened and M. Agreste stepped out.

All three pairs of eyes in the front hall turned to him, but he obviously only had eyes for one. Nathalie swallowed, not meeting his gaze, as he quickly looked her up and down with a strange expression on his face. 

“Good morning, Nathalie,” he said, in a deliberately level tone.

Nathalie’s voice was equally controlled, but noticeably more timid. “Good morning, sir.”

Adrien glanced at Marinette and raised his eyebrows suggestively. Marinette pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle a giggle, but the movement seemed to draw M. Agreste’s attention to the presence of an audience, and she hastily schooled her features into the calmest and most dignified expression she could manage, tucking both hands behind her back in an unconscious mimicry of his own posture.

“Good morning, Adrien,” he said, and nodded to Marinette. “Miss Dupain-Cheng.”

Adrien greeted his father in return, but all Marinette managed was an answering nod at the stern man towering over her. It was a relief when he turned and re-entered his office, beckoning Nathalie to come with him. Marinette noticed his fingertips brush his assistant’s shoulder blade as he ushered her through the door, and judging from Adrien’s growing smirk, so did he. 

As soon as the adults were out of sight, Adrien swept Marinette into a hug. “Thanks for coming,” he said, speaking into her hair. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“You saw me yesterday,” Marinette laughed.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be glad to see you now.” Adrien let her go, but grabbed her hand as he moved toward the stairs. “Come on, let’s go up to my room.”

*****

The atelier door closed on the teenagers, muffling their voices and leaving a pregnant silence inside. Nathalie stood in front of Gabriel, not quite making eye contact, but not moving to go to her desk either. Though he tried not to pry into her emotions, it was impossible not to feel her in such close proximity; that current of stress that he had been noticing for weeks had taken on a more immediate, almost frantic quality that made him jittery even sensing it at second-hand. Yet on the outside, she looked so calm. Only her unwillingness to look at him indicated that anything was wrong.

He was aware that the seconds were passing in silence, but all his plans for what to say seemed to have slipped away out the back door of his mind while he was looking at Nathalie. He had to say something. “I’m sorry for yesterday,” he blurted out.

Nathalie sighed. “I already said, don’t worry. We had just had...a close call. It didn’t mean anything.” Her voice was steady and practical as always, and Gabriel felt her anxiety easing as she spoke; she had apparently expected a worse reception. But there was still a ripple of pain emanating from her. On any other day, he wouldn’t have let on that he could sense it. She so prized her tight control of her emotions, after all, and he had no desire to embarrass her by pointing out a chink in her armor, but he had caused this, and he found himself oddly dissatisfied with her dismissive answer. Without thinking, he reached out to stop her as she moved toward her desk.

“No, you’re upset. I can feel it.” Nathalie tensed up as he spoke, eyes flashing and lips pressing into a thin line, and he realized immediately that he had made a mistake. Unsure how to correct it, he pressed on. “I shouldn’t have done it without your permission.”

_And if you had permission?_ asked a small voice in the back of his mind, but he ignored it. “I would never want to make you uncomfortable or” -

Nathalie’s face remained stoney, but there was a hint of some other emotion in it, one which Gabriel couldn’t make out. If he hadn’t known her so well, he could have missed the trace of a quaver in her voice when she interrupted him. “Please, sir. Leave it.” She turned away and set her purse on her desk. “I’ll go ask our guest if she’ll be here for lunch.” 

*****

Marinette unwrapped her scarf from around her neck as she followed Adrien into his bedroom, and draped it over the back of the white sofa when she got inside. Adrien’s eyes followed it. “Nice scarf,” he said. “Did you make it?”

“Yeah,” Marinette answered absently, walking around to the front of the sofa facing the window and setting down her backpack. Tikki and Pollen flitted out of their hiding places and alighted on the sofa arm to greet each other in quiet voices.

“It looks a lot like the one Father got me for my birthday last year,” Adrien said. Then he paused and picked it up, examining the fringe at the ends. “It looks _exactly_ like the one Father got me. Just a different color.”

Marinette was brought up short. Sure, she reused patterns when she found good ones, and sure, maybe she had been jealous of Adrien’s scarf while she was sewing it and wanted one of her own, but surely they weren’t alike enough for him to connect the dots… right? “Uh, that’s interesting.” 

The grin Adrien had been wearing since she arrived slid off his face; Marinette realized her own mouth was slightly open and closed it. She watched as Adrien went and shuffled around in a drawer and pulled out his matching scarf. He brought it back to the sofa and held it next to Marinette’s. “This wasn’t from my father, was it?” he asked flatly.

Marinette gulped and shuffled her feet. “You looked so happy when you thought it was,” she said, in a very small voice. “I didn’t want to spoil it for you. I don’t know what made you think it, though.”

“Nathalie said so.” Adrien rubbed a section of the blue fabric between his fingers, frowning. “Did you drop it off through the mailbox at the front gate?”

“Yeah, but” - 

A knock at the door cut Marinette off, and Nathalie opened the door without waiting for an answer. “Adrien,” she said. “I came to ask if Marinette would be staying for lunch.”

Adrien opened his mouth to say something, but Marinette beat him to it. “Oh, no, I don’t want to impose.”

“Very well.”

Nathalie’s eyes dropped to the two scarves in Adrien’s hands. Marinette saw that Adrien had noticed. He shut his mouth and frowned, and Marinette wondered for a moment if he was going to say something, but he just lowered his hands to his sides. “Was there anything else, Nathalie?”

Nathalie shook her head. “No, that was all. Ah” - she frowned as though she had lost her train of thought. “Right. Enjoy yourselves.” Without another word, she turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her. The kwaamis darted out from Marinette’s backpack where they had hidden.

Adrien glared and threw the two scarves onto the sofa. “I can’t _believe_ she stole that from you.”

“We have bigger things to think about right now.” Marinette sat down cross-legged on the sofa and gestured for Adrien to join her. He obliged, seeming to calm at the reminder.

“Yeah, there’s a lot to think about.” He grinned lopsidedly. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well” - Marinette rummaged in her backpack for the list she had made as soon as she got back to her house the day before - “lucky I wrote it all down.” She unfolded the sheet of paper and scanned the numbered points, with Adrien leaning over to read it as well. A shiver ran up her spine at his proximity. “One: Gabriel Agreste and Hawkmoth.”

Adrien’s smile widened at that; he seemed to have already put the matter of the scarf out of his mind.

“Your father was there at the scene of the attack. Hawkmoth and Madame Malheur were both there too.” Marinette fiddled with a corner of the paper, trying to replay each movement of the battle in her mind. “Did you actually see Hawkmoth and your father at the same time?”

“Close enough to the same time that they would have had to be teleporting if they were the same person.” Adrien paused. “Miraculous holders can’t teleport, can they?”

“I don’t think so,” Marinette said, and Tikki and Pollen nodded their affirmation from the sofa arm. “So…”

Tikki piped up. “It could still be some sort of trick, Marinette.”

“There could always be a trick,” Adrien jumped in. “At what point do we accept what we see?”

Marinette glanced sideways at her partner. One of her knees started to bounce unconsciously. “Look,” she said. “I don’t want your father to be Hawkmoth either. But I don’t know. Tikki, Pollen? How does this add up against the grimoire for evidence?”

The two kwaamis looked at each other, then back at their holders. It was Pollen who answered. “I think it tilts the balance in M. Agreste’s favor, but keep your eyes open all the same.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.” Marinette took out a pencil from her backpack and started doodling circles in the blank space at the bottom of her list. She gave a huff of frustration. “I wish we could find out anything for sure.” The tip of her pencil pierced through the paper.

Adrien placed a hand on her knee, and she glanced at it, then up at his face. “I know,” he said. “But we will. We just need to look for more leads.”

Marinette sighed and crossed out the first item on the list. “Yeah. Okay, two: Madame Malheur’s cataclysm.”

“What about it?”

Marinette’s pencil started moving again, trailing across the paper in aimless swirls. “I think…” She thought back to the rooftop for the hundredth time in the less than twenty-four hours since. It had all happened so quickly, but she was pretty sure of what she had seen. “I think she lost control for a second, on top of that building.” Adrien’s hand tightened on her knee. “She called it up, and then jumped for me, but before she got to me...there was just this pulse of black all around her, and then the roof went out from under us.”

She looked back at Adrien and saw his brow furrowed in concern. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

Adrien was silent for several long seconds. “I didn’t know that could happen,” he said at last.

“Neither did I, but…”

“Do you think she’s going to fight after this?” And before Marinette could say anything, he went on: “Is it because of the peacock miraculous? Could it have done something that affected her ability to use other miraculous? Or did they break it the same way the peacock miraculous _got_ broken? Plagg didn’t tell me how that happened. If he knew.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Marinette couldn’t help laughing at the rush of words. “One question at a time, kitty! And I can’t answer any of them, anyway.” She stopped, and the giggles died in her throat as a thought occurred to her. “That’s...pretty scary, actually. I know she’s a villain, but still, I’ve seen what Plagg can do and I _really_ wouldn’t want it going haywire around me.”

Adrien nodded gravely. “I wonder what they’re doing that they think is worth that kind of risk.”

*****

Gabriel was running his fingers over a line of Emilie’s small loopy cursive when Nathalie returned to the atelier. Emilie had made rough translations of the pages on the ladybug and black cat miraculous and the wish, near the end of her life, and those were what she had passed on to him, with the plea for him to bring her back, no matter what. 

He looked up from flipping back and forth between the ladybug page and the page on repairing miraculous when he heard Nathalie enter. She noticed the grimoire in his hands and approached, giving no sign of lingering awkwardness from their conversation a few minutes before. “Any progress?” she asked.

In response, he turned back to the ladybug page. “Perhaps,” he said. “I worked on it for a while last night as well.” By “last night” he really meant some time after two o’clock that morning, after dozing off leaning against Emilie’s coffin and waking up again full of an unaccountable energy that had carried him through until the sky started to lighten. He was paying for it now, of course. He chose not to mention any of this to Nathalie.

Nathalie hummed assent and leaned closer, glancing up momentarily as she did and meeting his eyes before turning her attention to the book in his hands. “Has this helped at all?” she asked, tapping the sheet of paper with Emilie’s writing on it resting on the facing page. 

“Some.”

Nathalie lifted the book out of his hands. He didn’t resist. “Where were you working?” she asked.

“The page about broken miraculous.”

She gave him a sharp glance out of the corner of her eyes and leafed through the pages, stopping at the right one. Her lips pursed in concentration as she scanned the page, lightly touching each of the (disappointingly few) new notations he had made as she read them. Gabriel watched her read. She frowned and ran her finger along one line. Then her eyes lit up. She looked up at him with wide eyes and his heart rate jumped. “I think I have something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive, guys! I thought that online school would make me less busy, but it's turned out to be the exact opposite. Also I got hung up on this chapter because I was arguing with the characters about what they were going to do: I wanted to jump to more plot progression, they wanted to talk. They won, in case you couldn't tell, but fear not, we compromised on plot progression NEXT chapter. 
> 
> I never understood the writer talk about the characters being in charge of the story until I started writing this fic. Whoever is driving this train, it's definitely not me anymore.


	18. Chapter 18

Plagg and Nooroo had settled on the edge of Nathalie’s desk to watch their holders trip and stumble their way through addressing what had happened the day before, and they saw the flash of pain that crossed Nathalie’s face as she turned away from Gabriel. When she excused herself and the door shut behind her, Gabriel ran a fretful hand over his hair with his eyes fixed on the closed door, then shook his head and went to his podium with slumped shoulders, oblivious to the kwaamis’ eyes on him.

“ _ That _ went well,” Plagg drawled.

“I’ve rarely seen them that way with each other,” Nooroo agreed softly. Plagg looked sideways and saw his friend still watching Gabriel, with eyes full of concern. He was still astonished at the way he had found Nooroo. The butterfly kwaami was jumpier than Plagg remembered - he admitted that Gabriel had been harsher with him early on than he was these days - but he worried for his holder more than he resented him, and he kept faith that Gabriel could change his ways. Plagg had found Nooroo’s quiet, earnest concern baffling at first, but after the handful of genuine exchanges he had shared with Nathalie, he was beginning to understand his fellow kwaami’s position a bit better.

As if reading his thoughts, Nooroo turned to him. “How is Nathalie?”

Plagg shrugged uncomfortably. “Pretty upset.”

“She loves him deeply,” Nooroo mused, glancing watchfully at Gabriel as if to make sure he wasn’t overhearing. “And I believe he is beginning to love her too.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“What?” Nooroo gave Plagg a puzzled frown, and Plagg remembered that Nooroo, like him, had been locked away for many years, and unlike him had had very limited opportunities for exposure to pop culture since coming out.

“Uh, nothing.” Plagg leaned back and stared across the room at Gabriel, who had brought out a large book from his safe and was paging through it, looking distracted. “It means you’re right. But neither of them is gonna admit it.” He groaned. “This is worse than the heroes.” He had filled Nooroo in on the nature of Adrien and Marinette’s romantic entanglement, steering carefully clear of any hints toward their civilian identities.

“At least the heroes might have resolved theirs by now.”

Plagg turned around and poked his head up over the rim of the bowl that Nathalie usually kept stocked with snacks for the kwaamis - not that she had ever admitted to it, it had simply appeared one day. It was empty. “Aw, man.”

“Plagg,” said Nooroo from behind him, in a reproachful tone, “did you kill her plant?”

“Huh?” Plagg looked back at Nooroo, then up at the African violet that sat in a green mug next to the snack bowl. It had been a gift from Adrien, he remembered. The leaves were black and dry, looking ready to crumble away at a touch, but Plagg knew for a fact that he hadn’t been near it. “I didn’t do that! I’ve never cataclysmed anything as small as half a plant. Besides, you didn’t hear this from me, but I feel kind of bad for her.”

“Are you sure?” Nooroo floated up to the edge of the mug and prodded one of the leaves. It disintegrated into ashy flakes that swirled down onto the soil and the desk.

“She probably got busy and forgot to water it,” Plagg said, though his eyes remained resting uneasily on the blackened plant.

“I saw her watering it yesterday morning,” Nooroo insisted. “It was green.”

Plagg was spared from responding by Nathalie reentering the room, looking far more composed than she had when she left; she gave the kwaamis a small nod of acknowledgement before joining Gabriel on the other side of the room. Nooroo’s eyes followed her pensively. Plagg didn’t ask what his friend was thinking. 

*****

The page on repairing a miraculous had three parts: a short paragraph simply instructing to fix the physical damage to the jewelry, as far as they could tell; an ominous-looking note in red ink at the bottom of the page; and in between, a long passage of text with a heading, of which neither Gabriel nor Nathalie had managed to make heads or tails so far. Nathalie plucked Gabriel’s pencil out of his hand, with a sharp, eager gleam in her eyes that he usually only saw when she was transformed. She underlined one word of the heading and then spun the pencil around in her fingers and tapped the eraser on the paper. “Look there.”

Gabriel looked, but whatever flash of insight had just come to Nathalie, it was evading him. “What about it?”

Nathalie flipped through the pages to the one detailing the combination of the ladybug and black cat miraculous, ran her fingers down the block of text and stopped at another word, underlining it as well. Gabriel stared at it, then looked over at Nathalie. She fixed him with those sharp blue eyes, a trace of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s the same word,” she said. “Just inflected differently. ‘Spell.’” She left a pause, and when Gabriel didn’t respond, turned back to where they had been. “So what if the reason we couldn’t make out this paragraph is that it’s written in a different language from the rest? It isn’t more instructions. It’s an incantation.”

She smoothed the lock of hair at her forehead and trailed her fingers over the troublesome paragraph. “Yes,” she murmured. “It’s the same script, but none of it looks like anything we’ve seen in the rest of the book.”

“Of course.” Gabriel leaned down to look closer, his hand almost but not quite brushing Nathalie’s on the edge of the page, the still-fresh tension between them almost but not quite forgotten for the moment. “So…” He drew out the word, testing the implications in his mind. “All it takes to repair a miraculous is fixing it physically and reciting an incantation?” He frowned and glanced over his shoulder at Emilie’s portrait. “Why didn’t Emilie do it? She could read the grimoire better than we can.”

“Maybe it’s easier said than done,” Nathalie said quietly. Gabriel turned back to her. “This is using magic without a miraculous to control it. It could require background training that we don’t have.” She went to shut the book, but Gabriel reached out and grasped its edge to stop her. Their eyes met and held, and even now, even with how much she had healed, and with the triumph of her discovery, he could see the weariness in her gaze. He didn’t know what was causing it, or if fixing the miraculous would help her at all. He knew he had to try.

“You’re going to do it anyway,” Nathalie said, breaking the silence. It was not a question. 

“Yes.” Gabriel faltered, startled by the vehemence of his own protective instinct. Remembering himself, he removed his hands from the book and clasped them behind his back, putting a bit of space between himself and Nathalie. He resisted the urge to look up over his shoulder at the painting. “It will be...an asset to have it usable,” he managed.

Nathalie gave a single nod. “Of course, sir,” she said, and raised one eyebrow. “In that case, let’s start by deciphering this warning at the bottom, shall we?”

*****

Upstairs, Adrien leaned over Marinette’s shoulder to look at her list. “Number three,” he read. “The villains’ relationship.” He looked up at Marinette. “What about it?”

“Well.” Marinette was doodling again. A smile crept onto Adrien’s lips at the sight of her small hand moving across the paper. “I suppose we don’t know anything new, but what happened in that building...I wanted to make a note of it. Hawkmoth had me right there, and it wasn’t even like Madame Malheur was in immediate danger, just stuck. But he ignored me to get her out of there.”

Adrien whistled and nudged Marinette’s shoulder with his own. “I think we know what that means.” 

“Don’t read into it,” Marinette laughed. “You know I’d do the same for you, bug boy.”

Then she fell silent mid-laugh, and her cheeks flushed as if she had just realized what she said. Adrien looked down at his lap. “Uh-huh. I mean - you too, Marinette.”

Silence fell. Adrien fidgeted, considering his next move, but before he could say anything, he heard Marinette take a deep breath beside him and blurt out: “Well, that’s all! Want to play some video games?”

“Weren’t we still” - but Marinette was already folding up her paper and stuffing it away in her backpack. “Um, yeah, sure.” He glanced back at Marinette as he went to the computer, and saw her leaning over to whisper something to Tikki, tugging at her pigtails with her face scrunched up in frustration.

*****

It took Gabriel and Nathalie more than a week to put everything in order to attempt to repair the peacock miraculous, and the “simple” direction to fix the physical damage turned out to be almost as difficult as they feared the magic would be. Neither of them had the skills to do it, but Gabriel, not knowing the guardian’s identity or connections, balked at taking it to a jeweler in case it was recognized and traced back to them. In the end they remembered that Nathalie needed to go to London overnight on business, and cautiously arranged for it to be repaired there instead. 

When she got back, she stopped in her apartment to drop off her bags and put on the brooch for a moment, long enough to formally renounce Duusu as the grimoire had warned her to do before attempting the spell. When she took it off again, she paused to run her thumb over the crack on the back, neatly patched so that only by looking closely could she see where it had been. Then she tucked it away in her blazer and hurried to the mansion.

She arrived to find Gabriel pacing, with creases under his eyes as though he hadn’t slept. He had already pushed her computer monitor and the few other items on her desk to one end to clear a space for them to work, and Nathalie was too distracted to protest. Plagg was already put away in the ring to keep him from interfering; Nathalie handed over the brooch when Gabriel asked for it, careful not to let her fingers brush his. It had not escaped her notice that, while she had noticed no further tension between them since the morning after the kiss, he had not touched her since then, and she had respected his clear wish for more distance.

As Gabriel inspected the repair job on the brooch, Nathalie fetched the grimoire and laid it out on the desk, open to the correct page. The warning in red ink cautioned that the magic should only be attempted by experienced guardians except in emergencies, and in a setting free of what they tentatively read as “unstable magical influences.” Nathalie swallowed and reached up unconsciously to fuss with her bun.

Gabriel stood on the other side of the desk. “Are you ready?” he asked. Nathalie could see a hint of worry in his expression, and willed her own voice not to shake.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Then, to her surprise, Gabriel held out the brooch to her.

She took it and curled her hand around it, frowning. “Do you want me to do it?”

“I thought you might like to. It is more yours than mine, after all.” He must have seen the doubt on her face, because he backpedaled. “If you would rather not, though…”

“No.” Nathalie took a deep breath and stared into Gabriel’s steel-blue eyes. “I’ll do it.” She turned her hand and uncurled it, leaving the brooch resting front side up on her open palm, used her other hand to turn the grimoire so that it was facing her instead of Gabriel, and began to read.

After the first four words, she faltered, body going rigid as the very air seemed to seize and stiffen around her, as if the very moment they were in was holding its breath, waiting for what she would do. She found her own breaths coming sharp and shallow. The brooch weighed much too heavily in her palm. She realized that Gabriel had leaned forward, gripping the edge of the desk. “Are you all right?” he asked, not bothering to hide the anxiety in his voice.

Nathalie knew she would disrupt the spell if she spoke, but she managed a nod and resumed her reading.

She tried to hold her hands steady - one held palm up in front of her, the other resting on the table - but she couldn’t stop them trembling a little from the adrenaline rushing through her system. Her pulse thumped almost painfully in the hollow of her throat. She felt that she was lifting something tall and unstable, and only by her concentration and her careful enunciation of the strange words was she holding it together, keeping it from toppling. 

For a few moments, all seemed to be going well. She was stretching; if she could just keep that balance until the end...but in the middle of the third line, she felt a shudder, once and then again. For a moment, her mouth tripped over the syllables. Something was vibrating, around her or in her. Whatever she was so precariously holding was destabilizing, trying to shake itself apart. Her breaths, quick and shallow, scraped in her throat. She didn’t know what would happen if it fell. 

From a distance, she realized Gabriel was reaching out to her, saying her name, but she tried to block it out to concentrate. The harder she concentrated, the more violent the shaking became, as if she was knocking it more off-kilter by grappling with it.

On an instinct, she skipped ahead to the end of the paragraph, seeing the first phrase repeated at the end, and read it off again.

The unnatural tension in the air eased all at once. Nathalie’s arm suddenly felt too weak to hold up, and she dropped her hand to the desk; the brooch fell and clattered across the surface. She swallowed, trying to ease the sting of her dry throat.

“Nathalie! What happened?” Gabriel’s brows were knitted in concern, and he was reaching out to her, his hand stopping inches from her arm as if he wasn’t sure it was safe to touch her. 

She straightened, feeling herself trembling. “I’m all right. But...I can’t do it.” Seeing the question coming, she headed it off before he could ask it. “The spell isn’t working for me. I think…” The idea came to her mind as she spoke, and her mouth opened in a silent  _ oh _ . “I think the fact that I’ve used the broken miraculous might be affecting my ability to handle the magic. That could be why Emilie never fixed it herself.”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “Of course.” He picked up the miraculous from where it had fallen and ran his fingertip along the edge. “Sit, Nathalie, you’re shaking. I will try.”

The comment made Nathalie aware of how wobbly her legs felt; she nearly fell back into her desk chair. She clasped her hands on her lap and watched as Gabriel turned the book to face him and began to read. The spell sounded less strange to her in his deep voice than in her own. His face was hard with concentration, giving nothing away about his progress.

It felt like forever that she sat, still as a stone, waiting for the outcome. At one point Gabriel’s eyes widened for a moment, followed by a slight frown. A few moments later, he brought the spell to a close and let out a heavy breath. 

“Well?” Nathalie asked after a short pause.

Gabriel looked up and pressed the fingers of his free hand to his temple. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Near the end, it seemed to…” He gestured vaguely, as if at a loss for how to put words to the experience. “Fall flat somehow. Like a piece of music that went muffled all of a sudden.”

“You don’t think it worked?”

“I don’t  _ know _ whether it worked,” he repeated.

Nathalie stood and reached out, palm up, signalling for Gabriel to hand her the peacock miraculous now closed loosely in his fist. His eyes darted down to her hand and then back to her face. He didn’t move. She curled her fingers slightly, fixing Gabriel with an expectant look. His lips pressed together in a tight line, but after a pause, he opened his hand and tipped the miraculous into Nathalie’s, not letting his fingers touch hers. She turned it and fastened it to the front of her turtleneck.

A muted tingle ran through her ribs as the brooch pulsed blue, and goosebumps rose on her skin. It was much like what she had felt before her last transformation, when she made the sentimonster Gabriel - less intense of a sensation, but alike all the same. “I don’t think” - she began, but she was distracted by Duusu materializing out of blue light. For once, the kwaami was silent as she hovered between the two humans, looking from Nathalie to Gabriel and back with a calm, if puzzled expression. 

“Duusu?” Nathalie asked. “Is everything all right?”

Duusu blinked. “Where’s Miss Emilie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I don't know. It's finals time. My brain is completely shot.


	19. Chapter 19

“Where’s Miss Emilie?”

Duusu’s question left a taut stillness behind it, in which both humans stared at her, trying to make sense of the statement. Nathalie was the first to break it. “Duusu...Emilie’s dead,” she said softly. 

Duusu didn’t let out the piercing wail that Nathalie had braced herself for, but her eyes widened in distress. “What? She said she only had to put me away for a few minutes.” Despite the hurt in her voice, it was calmer than Nathalie had ever heard it, and not quite so shrill in tone. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know,” Nathalie said. “ It’s been more than a year since she died.” She stretched out her hand, inviting Duusu to alight on it the way she sometimes did in her quieter moments, but the kwaami didn’t move, and after a moment she drew her hand back. “You don’t remember me?” 

“I remember that you’re Miss Emilie’s friend.” 

“But not that I’ve been using your miraculous.” 

Duusu shook her head. 

Gabriel seemed to have finally recovered from his shock, and was leaning forward slightly, gripping the edge of the desk. “Duusu, what do you remember about what Emilie was doing?” 

Duusu twisted in midair to look at him and pressed her small paws to her head. “It’s a bit fuzzy,” she admitted. “Things became harder to remember the longer she used me. But I know she was going to try to fix my miraculous.” 

Nathalie’s eyes snapped up to Gabriel’s. “You said she never tried” - she began, at the same moment as he said: “I didn’t know she tried to fix it!” 

“And she never used Duusu after that?” 

Gabriel groaned. “Two weeks before she died, she took a sudden turn for the worse. Remember?”

“Oh…” Nathalie reached for the back of her desk chair to steady herself, remembering the shaking, collapsing,  _ falling _ feeling of her failed casting. “I couldn’t finish the spell. If she tried to push through…”  _ It could have been the last nail in her coffin. Mine, too. _

It was impossible to tell if Gabriel was thinking the same thing. He took a few heavy breaths, looking down at the desk with his hands braced on the edge. “Why didn’t she tell me?” he muttered, then raised his head and addressed Duusu. “What was she doing with the miraculous? I know she would never have kept it a secret from me if it wasn’t important, but…” He trailed off. Near the end, his voice had taken on a frantic edge. 

And there it was again, like the day Gabriel asked her to help go through Emilie’s clothes: the suggestion of a suggestion that perhaps Emilie was not coming back. Nathalie knew that Gabriel would not be prying into his wife’s secrets if he fully believed that she might be there tomorrow to pick up where she left off, and she wondered what it meant. In the days since they… since the battle when the building had fallen, when they hadn’t been laying plans for the repair of the brooch, he had only been spending more time in front of Emilie’s coffin, sending out more akumas and giving them more over-the-top speeches about his impending victory. 

Duusu was looking pensively back and forth between the two of them, as if catching up to everything she had just heard. “Oh. Oh, I see.” She sat back in mid-air and hummed sadly. “Miss Emilie was not a hero. I’m sorry.” 

Nathalie blinked. They knew that already - no one but the two of them had known Emilie’s peacock persona. Whatever she had been doing, she was no public figure like Ladybug and Chat Noir. From the way Gabriel’s face contorted into a glare, though, it seemed that he had interpreted Duusu’s comment differently. “What do you mean?” he snapped. “She was  _ not _ a criminal.”

“No, no.” Duusu raised her small paws placatingly. “She was intrigued by the miraculous. She liked the challenge of finding out more about them, knowing things that other people didn’t know, and the freedom and power of being transformed. She would go out and run across the city. Nothing more.” 

Nathalie’s hands, still on the back of the chair, tightened as she watched Gabriel teeter between rage and confusion. “That can’t be,” he managed finally, sounding as though each word were sticking in his throat. “Emilie would not have taken such a risk for - for a  _ game _ .” 

Wouldn’t she? Nathalie found that she didn’t know. Come to think of it, Emilie had always been one to follow her whims over thinking much about the future. When she concocted her plan to go to Tibet, she had been ready to pack a bag and fly out the next day; it had fallen to Nathalie to remind her of the need to work around her acting schedule and to arrange for care for Adrien. 

Duusu confirmed Nathalie’s train of thought. “The miraculous was only slightly damaged when she found it,” she said with a sympathetic look. Nathalie couldn’t see very well from her angle, but it looked like there were tears welling in Duusu’s eyes. “I warned her that it would worsen with use, but she took it lightly for a long time, until the effects started to get more severe. That was when she began to work harder to translate the grimoire. I was impressed that she managed it,” she added, a genuine note of admiration in her voice. “She was really quite talented with language.” 

Gabriel’s hands had curled into fists on the desktop and he spoke through a clenched jaw. “What are you talking about? Tell me the truth!” 

“I am,” Duusu answered calmly. “Miss Emilie had a good heart, don’t doubt that - there was no malice in her, but there was hurt.” She was weeping visibly now, the tears sliding down her face and dropping through the air with an unnatural sparkle to them, but her voice didn’t quaver or change in the slightest. It sent a chill up Nathalie’s back, but at the same time she found it peculiarly reassuring. “She came from a controlling family, and spent much of her life, up until her marriage, feeling powerless. She told me so. I take it she told you too, yes?” She left a pause, but Gabriel, standing rigid and staring Duusu down through narrowed eyes, didn’t respond.

“She looked for control in her life where she could find it,” Duusu went on. “Using the miraculous was one way. It was a thrill to her, the same way it was a thrill to see how people responded to her charm - to allow them to worship her, even encourage it. The same way she relished making herself the center of your and your son’s worlds.”

Gabriel jerked his hand up as if to strike Duusu, but changed course and brought the flat of his palm down on Nathalie’s desk so hard that her coffee mug and the kwaamis’ snack bowl rattled. “How  _ dare _ you say such things about her?” he snarled at Duusu. “My wife was a good woman!  _ She loved me! _ ” 

To Nathalie’s amazement, Duusu didn’t flinch. “She was intelligent, and curious, and winsome,” she said earnestly. “And she did care about her family, but not with the same kind of adoration you gave her, I’m afraid. She was human, and humans can act selfishly and wrongly, even without meaning to.” 

As Gabriel stood trembling in silence, fixing Duusu with a glare that could probably have withered a lesser creature on the spot, Nathalie remembered how satisfied Emilie had looked when Gabriel put up the great golden portrait of her in the atelier, and the statue of her in the garden. Hadn’t that seemed odd, even at the time? The way she courted the admiration that surrounded her at every social event. The way she begrudged anyone else - even a  _ pet _ \- her husband’s and son’s attention. The way everyone seemed enchanted by her, and yet when she was gone it was so difficult to lay hold of the reason  _ why _ . 

At last, Gabriel managed to speak, in a voice that shook with anger. “You know nothing about my wife!”

Duusu looked back at him, unruffled, her luminescent tears still flowing. “I am the kwaami of emotion,” she said simply. “I knew her as well as anyone could. And I loved her too, don’t forget.”

“No. You’re wrong.” Gabriel gripped the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles went white. “You said yourself that you have trouble remembering.”

“Details, yes. Events. But I never forget what I sense in someone’s heart.”

Nathalie only realized she had been shifting backwards when she felt her back against the wall. Though she knew she wouldn’t have put her finger on it herself, now that she had heard Duusu out, she found she couldn’t argue to herself that the kwaami was wrong - but Gabriel, red-faced with gritted teeth, looked ready to flip the desk over. To Nathalie’s relief, though, he restrained himself from breaking anything. He turned as if to storm off to his lair, but stopped short when he caught sight of Emilie’s portrait on the wall, and made for the door instead.

***** 

The days had passed uneventfully for Adrien and Marinette since the battle when they had seen Adrien’s father among the bystanders. They had visited Master Fu soon after, but his thoughts were no more conclusive than theirs, leaving them back in the old, uneasy position of waiting for another clue, or for some stroke of inspiration that would tell them where to look for one. Hawkmoth had not eased up on his akumas since the incident. Madame Malheur had appeared, not for every fight, but for some; he noticed, though, that she had not attempted to use her cataclysm again, and wondered if it was coincidence - she had always seemed to prefer direct hand-to-hand combat over the use of her powers anyway - or a result of what had happened with Ladybug on the rooftop. Clearly she wasn’t concerned enough to keep out of the fray completely.

These same thoughts were running through his head yet again as Adrien made his way down to the school gymnasium at lunchtime. Marinette had family visiting, and had run home to eat with them. Lost in his own head, he yelped in surprise when a hand clamped onto his wrist and yanked him under the stairs. “Wha - oh. Alya?”

Alya grabbed his shoulders and leaned in so close he had to cross his eyes to see her clearly. “All right, what's going on?”

All that came out of Adrien's mouth was a sputter. Had she seen him transform? Had she seen Marinette transform and thought he would know about it? Had Nino let something slip about the heroes suspecting his father? Shit, Alya was still talking and he caught Marinette's name. This was it for sure.

“Sorry, could you - uh - repeat the question?”

Alya groaned and rolled her eyes. “I asked what's going on with you and Marinette!”

“Nothing's going on!” he said, a little too quickly.

One of Alya's eyebrows lifted incredulously. “Nuh-uh. Marinette's been giving me that for  _ weeks _ . One day she can't string together two words in front of you, and then all of a sudden you're sneaking off together all the time and she  _ refuses _ to tell me what changed.”

At last, Adrien's brain caught up to the conversation, and he almost laughed. “Oh. You think we’re, um...?”

“What on Earth did you  _ think _ I meant?”

Adrien shook his head. “Nothing! And there's nothing like that going on either. I don't know why she stopped being nervous” - that was only half true, but at this point, Adrien was more than used to white lies - “but it's been cool getting to know her better. That's all.”

Clearly, that was not the answer Alya had been looking for. She folded her arms and fixed him with a suspicious frown. “Riiight. Don't you dare break her heart, Agreste.”

“Break her heart?” She had made it more than clear in their time as partners that she wasn't interested in going there. And now that he knew her civilian identity, even though there had been about a hundred other higher-priority issues taking up his thoughts, he was pretty sure he knew who the other boy was. “What about Luka?”

Alya let out a heavy sigh. “Seriously?”

“What?” Adrien had the sense that there was some piece of the puzzle that he really ought to have.

“I'm not explaining. Ask Marinette if you really don't get it.” Alya ducked out from under the stairs. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go meet my delightful boyfriend.”

The realization hit Adrien as he watched her walk away. For a moment, all he could do was stand there with his mouth slightly open; then, as the irony sank in, he dropped to the floor under the stairs, pressed his arm over his mouth to avoid drawing attention, and laughed and laughed.

*****

By the end of the school day, Adrien had managed to come to terms with his revelation (more or less; Marinette had asked him if he was feeling all right, when he saw her coming back from lunch and promptly stumbled into a bench) and had formed a plan. He talked his driver into making a couple of brief detours on the way home from school, and it was with a heavier backpack and a large paper bag in his hands that he entered the mansion. Immediately, he heard voices coming from the atelier. Of course, Nathalie was supposed to have come back earlier in the afternoon from the business trip she had been on.  _ I can go say hello _ .

But he hadn’t taken more than a step away from the front door when the door to the atelier slammed open so hard it struck the wall with a thud, and his father stormed out toward the stairs, seemingly not seeing Adrien at all. His face, in the brief glimpse Adrien got, was twisted with anger and something else that might have been hurt. Nathalie was just behind him, reaching out toward him. “Gabriel!” she called, but he ignored her, and she stopped short in the middle of the foyer, watching him go, her hand dropping back to her side.

Adrien gaped. It took several long seconds, looking at Nathalie’s back and past her at the stairs where his father had vanished, before he found his voice. “Uh, Nathalie?”

Nathalie jumped and turned around, her hand flying to her chest. “Oh. Adrien.”

“Is everything all right?” Adrien asked, fiddling with the strap of his bag.

“Your father...has had a hard day. I would suggest you not disturb him.” Nathalie gave him a rueful smile, apparently meant to be comforting - He suspected that she hated having to tell him that his father, once again, didn’t want to see him - but it didn’t reach her eyes. Adrien got the sense that his father might have taken out his hard day on her. He noticed that, though she had had a moment to recover from being started, she kept her hand pressed to her sternum.

“Okay,” he said. “How was your business trip?”

Nathalie’s smile turned a shade more sincere. “It went very well, thank you.”

They stood for a moment more, awkwardly, before Nathalie seemed to gather herself, and said: “I’ll be in the atelier if you need anything. Don’t forget to practice your piano.”

“All right.”

On his way upstairs, Adrien wondered absently what had happened. Usually his father stayed shut away in the atelier during the day, especially when he got into one of his moods, and only went upstairs to his bedroom to sleep. And since when did Nathalie call him “Gabriel”? But when he got to his room and started to unpack his purchases, those questions were driven out of his mind. He had work to do.

*****

Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Emilie’s wardrobe. The morning after he kissed Nathalie, when he finally returned to his room just before sunrise, he had torn open all the boxes of Emilie’s clothes that they had packed up for storage and returned them to their places. The empty boxes were still in the corner where he had thrown them. The wing chair where they had been draping the clothes that were going to be stored remained out of place, next to the wardrobe, where Nathalie had put it.

With a growl of frustration, he jumped up and pushed the chair over. It landed with a thud and a sharp cracking noise, and Gabriel immediately regretted it; that chair had been one of Emilie’s favorites. He stood stock-still, not moving to inspect the damage.

Duusu was  _ wrong _ about Emilie. She  _ had _ to be. How dare she act like she knew everything that had gone on in his wife’s head? How dare she insinuate that she had been anything less than…

Less than what? Perfect? Of course Gabriel knew that no one was perfect, not really. But Emilie… he didn’t want to think of her as anything else. 

Duusu couldn’t be right. There had to be something else going on, something more, something more fitting of someone like Emilie… After all, why would she have begged him to bring her back, if not because she was leaving some important work undone? He thought back to their last conversation.

_ “I need you,” he said, holding one of Emilie’s small hands against his chest with both of his as he leaned over her bed. _

_ “I know.” Emile could hardly speak louder than a whisper. She had been coughing more and more as she got sicker, and it was wearing out her throat, making her once-musical voice raw and raspy. “You can have me back. Remember?” _

_ Of course he remembered. Emilie’s scheme, and the resultant promise she had drawn out of him, had been nearly all he could think about since she had introduced it a week ago; it weighed on his mind even more than her impending death. He felt himself start to choke up. “What if I can’t do it?” _

_ “You will. You were always stubborn.” Her hand stirred in his grip. Despite her reassuring words, he could hear the fear in her voice. “Don’t give up on me, Gabriel. Please.” _

_ “Never. I love you.” _

_ Emilie smiled weakly and closed her eyes. _

She had known that he would do anything she asked of him - even terrorize a city, even refuse to move on from her death. Was that why she had asked, because she knew he would obey? Had she simply been afraid to die? No, Duusu had gotten into his head. That  _ creature _ was trying to spoil his memory of his wife. Either deliberately, trying by a more devious approach than Nooroo’s to get him to give up, or she truly believed what she had said, but she was wrong. She  _ had _ to be wrong. 

A tap on the door and a soft female voice pulled him out of his freefalling thoughts. “Sir?” When he didn’t respond, she tried again. “Gabriel?”

More silence. He could picture Nathalie out in the hall, resting her hand against the closed door with worry marking that usually stoic face, and was filled with the desire to get up and let her in, let her wrap her arms around him and comfort him in silence the way she sometimes did when things were bad enough to warrant a break in her professionalism. But as he had proved a little over a week ago, too much proximity to Nathalie was dangerous. Even if it had only been a spontaneous mistake and nothing more, he needed to maintain his boundaries. Even now.  _ Especially _ now.

It didn’t stop him from staring at the door, as though by looking long enough he could catch a glimpse of Nathalie on the other side.

After a time, he heard her sigh. “I’ve rearranged your work. You don’t need to worry about anything for the rest of today. And… I’m going to stay here tonight.”

Gabriel didn’t answer, not knowing whether he could resist the urge to get up and open the door if this turned from a monologue to a conversation. After another few seconds, he heard the tapping of her heels fading away down the hall. He took off his glasses and put his face in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was an absolute bitch to write. This vision of Emilie got ahold of me months ago and it's perfectly clear in my head, but when it came time to actually write it, it was SO difficult to express properly. I'm still not totally sure how I feel about the chapter, but I think I'm as happy with it as I'm going to get.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Casually rolls up with a new chapter as if it hasn't been three full weeks...whoops~~

When Nathalie returned to the atelier, she sagged into her desk chair and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands. Her eyes landed on a puddle of coffee surrounding her mug, having apparently sloshed out when Gabriel struck the desk. As she reached for tissues and began to wipe it up, she noticed Duusu perched on top of the computer monitor, watching her in silence. Her eyes still glittered with tears.

“I'm sorry about him, Duusu,” she said, and dropped the sodden tissues in the trash.

“Don't be,” Duusu replied. "It's painful for him to be asked to change his perception of a woman he loves."

“He made you cry.” Nathalie leaned back in her chair and let out a breath, staring at her kwaami and trying helplessly to figure out what to make of her.

Duusu shook her head. “I cry for his hurt. And yours.”

"...Right." Nathalie closed her eyes for a long moment, gesturing vaguely in Duusu's direction. “So, this is - you, then?”

“What do you mean?”

Nathalie opened her eyes again to see that Duusu had floated closer to her face, looking worried. “Before, when I talked to you, you... acted differently,” she said carefully. “Was that because your miraculous was broken? This is who you actually are?”

Duusu's face scrunched up in confusion. “I suppose, if Miss Emilie attempted to repair the brooch and it went wrong, that could have affected me. Us kwaamis aren’t told much about these things.” She frowned. “What happened in the time I can't remember?”

The image of feverish dark eyes drifted through Nathalie’s mind, accompanied by a wild giggling. She had never minded the old Duusu - she had been sweet, if a bit overwhelming at times - but looking at the creature in front of her now and realizing the extent to which the rogue magic had affected her mind, Nathalie found the contrast unsettling, to say the least. “Quite a lot happened,” she said cautiously.

“You’re afraid to tell me, because you feel guilty.” It was not a question.

Nathalie frowned at the ease with which the kwaami could read her emotions. “I suppose so. Would you really like to know?”

Duusu nodded, and Nathalie, hesitantly at first but with greater confidence when Duusu only listened calmly and made no move to interrupt, embarked on the story of everything that had happened since Duusu’s last memory: from Emilie’s downturn in health, Gabriel’s promise, and Emilie’s death, through the capture of the ring and the process of translating the grimoire and repairing the brooch. She explained each time she had become Mayura, thinking it only fair for Duusu to know how and why she had been used, but skated over the matter of the kwaami’s mental state. She didn’t bother mentioning her growing feelings toward Gabriel; it was not a subject she was comfortable talking much about, and the empathetic Duusu doubtless already knew.

Duusu wept again as Nathalie talked, but at the end she dried her eyes and fixed Nathalie with an unreadable look. “I understand,” she said, after a long, agonizing pause.

“You - you do?”

“I _ understand _ ,” Duusu repeated, softly but firmly. “I don’t condone. But I’ve seen love and grief drive people to extremes plenty of times before.” There was another protracted pause. Nathalie reached for a pen on the desk and turned it in her fingers, before deciding to break the silence with a practical question.

“Is your miraculous fixed?”

Duusu tilted her head to the side, eyes half-closed. Then she drifted over to Nathalie and pressed her small paws to the brooch on her chest, tracing along the outlines of each feather. “Not quite,” she said at last, and Nathalie’s shoulders sagged. “There’s still a weakness in the magic, but you’ve turned back the clock, so to speak.”

Nathalie opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it, dithering about whether to ask so soon after Duusu had voiced her disapproval about Nathalie’s activities. Finally her commitment to Gabriel's cause won out, though the asking left a sour taste in her mouth. “So I could use it again, safely?”

The kwaami eyed her, with what looked like amusement on her face. “I could say no, you know, just to stop you from doing it. Or I could say yes even if it wasn’t true, to undermine you.”

Nathalie met her gaze evenly; two could play that game. “Are you?”

“No,” Duusu said. “Safe would be an overstatement, but it should take more than a few uses to aggravate the damage to the brooch that badly again. But whatever damage it’s done to  _ you _ will not have been fixed, and that might make any contact with magic risky.”

They had proved that much during Nathalie’s failed attempt at the ritual. She took a deep breath and pressed her fingers to her temples. “Thank you, Duusu… for being honest.”

“I don’t want to see any holder get hurt,” Duusu said simply. “Has Plagg been difficult?” When Nathalie offered a wry smile in response, she went on: “With my power, it’s difficult to maintain very much resentment. Nooroo is the same way. Speaking of which… I’d like to talk to the two of them.”

“You can talk to Plagg,” Nathalie said. “If Nooroo is out of the brooch, he’ll be with Gabriel.” She pulled the ring out of her pocket and slid it onto her finger, watching Plagg materialize in a halo of green light. He gave Nathalie a sullen look.

“Plagg?” Duusu said from behind him.

Plagg’s eyes went huge and he whirled around to look at her. “Duusu? Are you all right? They said” -

In a streak of blue, Duusu crashed into Plagg and hugged him so enthusiastically that she spun them both around in a full circle, laughing brightly. Sparks of light danced around them. “I’m okay. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” Plagg sounded more cheerful, and more earnest, than Nathalie had ever heard. “It’s been… what, a hundred and fifty years?”

A pang went through Nathalie at the sudden realization that, by using the miraculous for their own reasons, she and Gabriel were depriving Duusu and Nooroo - and now Plagg - of a companionship that had lasted many, many lifetimes. No wonder Plagg and Nooroo had spent so many hours whispering on the windowsill when the former had first arrived. He and Duusu retreated out to the edge of Plagg’s fifteen-foot limit so that Nathalie could no longer tell what they were saying, though she could see how animated their faces and their gestures were. She had half a mind to let them go find Gabriel and Nooroo - but she didn’t particularly trust Plagg after the night he snuck out of her apartment, and Gabriel was surely not in any frame of mind to take kindly to an intrusion.

The sound of her phone vibrating in her purse interrupted her thoughts, and she reached for it, expecting to see the name of some client who wanted to draw her into a lengthy discussion right near the end of the work day. When she picked it up, though, the name “Caroline Sancoeur” greeted her. She glanced at the door. Maybe she shouldn't, but it  _ was _ almost five, after all, and Gabriel was unlikely to come back any time soon. She picked up. “Hi, maman.”

Her mother’s voice was a bit distorted through the phone, but warm. “Hi, dear. How are you?”

“Fine,” said Nathalie cautiously. With her family, like her friends, there was no way to disentangle a single one of the many things that were not fine from the things that they could never be allowed to know. “Is everything all right?”

“Do you think I would only call if something was wrong?” her mother teased. “I just wanted to see how you were.” Her voice turned more serious. “Your father and I haven’t heard from you in months. I worry about my only daughter.”

Nathalie glanced from the kwaamis, to the spellbook on her desk, to the portrait of Emilie and the concealed buttons on it. “I’m thirty-four. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You’ll never grow out of being my daughter, dear. And I do worry about you. You used to tell me so much about what was going on in your life.”

After everything that had happened that day, it was that sentence that slipped into Nathalie’s head and wound its way around her temples, bringing the headachy feeling of approaching tears. She pushed up her glasses and pressed the heel of her free hand to her eyes. “There’s - not much to tell. Just office stuff.” She swallowed. “Speaking of which, I am still at work.”

“All right, then I won’t keep you. But if you ever want to visit, you know you’re welcome in Vienna any time. I love you, dear.”

“I love you too, maman,” Nathalie said, and hung up before her mother could comment on the shake in her voice.

*****

“You told her, right?” Plagg asked, glancing sideways at Nathalie, who had put away her phone and was leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed. “That it’s not totally fixed?”

“Of course I told her. She may be on the wrong side, but it’s her right to know the risks.” Duusu looked at Plagg with twinkling eyes. “You care, don’t you?”

“What? No!” Plagg shook his head for emphasis. “Caring about the bad guys is your thing, not mine.”

Duusu laughed. “You can’t fool me.”

He should have known better. Duusu was nearly impossible to deceive; she always had been. Plagg folded his arms and looked away. “Fine. Maybe a little.”

“He admits it!” He could practically hear her raised eyebrows in her tone of voice before he even turned back and saw them. When she spoke again, though, her voice was more serious and measured. “I worry about her use of a damaged miraculous. Especially since she’s also used yours. She’s wound very tightly. Something is wrong, even if she doesn’t realize it.” 

She trailed off, watching Nathalie’s still outline at the desk, and Plagg watched her watch. “What happened that time the butterfly got broken and the holder didn't bring it in?” he ventured. “You were closer to that. I was on the other side of the world, we just got rumors about it.” And they were ugly rumors. Nathalie shifted so that the lines of her profile, downcast and serious, were more visible, and Plagg felt a spike of worry.

Duusu made a small, sad noise of agreement. “It was a simple story, really,” she said. “The butterfly picks up strongly on anger. That holder started feeling it all while not transformed, without the help of the miraculous to strengthen his mind, and he eventually couldn’t bear it and turned violent.” Duusu paused. “But the peacock is different, and these things never happen the same way twice. No, I don’t know what to expect this time.” She turned a sharp look on Plagg. “Do you?”

*****

Marinette almost didn’t hear the tapping on her trapdoor over the sound of her sewing machine; it took Tikki nudging her cheek and pointing up at the ceiling before she shut off the machine and listened. A moment later, the tapping came again.

“Three guesses who that is,” Marinette said to Tikki, grinning, and went to open the trapdoor.

Sure enough, Yellowjacket was waiting on the other side, gallantly offering an arm to help Marinette climb out onto the balcony. It was already dark - Marinette, lost in her work, hadn’t realized the time - and the chilly air raised goosebumps on her arms through her light shirt. She leaned into Yellowjacket’s side gratefully when he wrapped an arm around her to keep her warm. “So what’s this about? Did I forget a patrol?”

“No, not at all!” Yellowjacket was practically vibrating next to her, but with excitement or nerves she couldn’t tell - from the sound of his voice, a little of both. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh? Is it an outside surprise?” Even with his warmth next to her, Marinette couldn’t help but shiver a little. When he gave a hum of affirmation, she pulled away from his grip. “Then let me get a sweater first.”

After obtaining the sweater, she rejoined her partner, who was leaning on the railing looking out over the city. He jumped when she stepped up next to him, then chuckled nervously. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“Then hold on!” Before Marinette could respond, Yellowjacket scooped her up into his arms, making her squeak in surprise. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he sprang up onto the railing; he balanced for a moment before leaping over to the next rooftop, then another and another.

Marinette pressed her face into his chest to protect her eyes from the rush of the cold night air, though even with her best efforts they still watered. She had to wipe them with the side of her hand when they finally arrived at their destination and Yellowjacket set her back on her feet. As soon as her vision cleared, she recognized the scene, in a dizzying moment of deja vu. 

“Oh,” she said quietly, looking at the blanket spread out in front of them, surrounded by roses and countless tealights. 

Yellowjacket rubbed at the back of his neck. “See, last time I did this it was for Ladybug, and then I ended up bringing you instead, but I didn’t know that you  _ were _ Ladybug, and I thought, well, maybe we could… do it again, but properly this time?”

Marinette blinked at the scene. Her shoulders felt tense, there was a bittersweet pang in her chest, and in a moment of detachment, she wondered why this - Adrien, offering all this to her - wasn’t as overwhelmingly exciting as it should have been. But Yellowjacket was clearly nervous about the reception of his surprise, so she smiled to reassure him. “It’s beautiful.”

Yellowjacket detransformed, and they both settled cross-legged on the picnic blanket. Marinette’s nose and cheeks tingled from the chilly air, and she pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her oversized sweater, listening to the road noise rising up from below. Adrien’s face had taken on a serious look that she recognized. She fixed her eyes on the flickering movement of one of the candles around the edges of the blanket and waited for him to speak.

“We need to talk,” he said quietly, hopefully.

Nothing good ever came of that sentence, and Marinette, despite having a pretty clear idea of what her partner was getting at, felt oddly apprehensive. She picked at the sleeve of her sweater. “I guess we do.”

Adrien leaned forward slightly. “So, maybe this is a weird question, but the other guy you kept talking about… it was me, wasn’t it?”

Heat flooded Marinette’s cheeks, pushing out the evening cold, and for a moment she could only stutter and will herself not to blurt out anything stupid. When she felt she had regained enough control to at least not make an idiot of herself, she said, without meeting his eyes: “Yeah, it was.”

Adrien hummed thoughtfully as he digested that; Marinette didn’t know what (or who) had clued him in, but she got the sense that he wasn’t surprised. Then he reached out slowly, giving Marinette time to pull away, and took her hand, carefully interlacing his fingers with hers. Even without looking directly at him, she caught the hopeful smile on his face. “So, I mean… We can be together now, right?”

Marinette opened her mouth to say yes, but the word tasted strange and hollow on her tongue and she didn’t know  _ why _ . She bit it back and took a moment to collect herself.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You...don’t know?” His voice sounded confused and more than a little hurt, and Marinette gripped his hand tighter and turned her head away, eyes landing on the distant blink of an airplane moving across the dark sky. 

“Look, I’m happy it’s you,” she said softly. “I really am. And I definitely still feel the same way, I just” - her voice was starting to pitch higher, the words chasing each other faster. “It’s not that I don’t want us to be together, I do, and I know we’ve had weeks to sort out the identity stuff, but - I don’t know - it still feels” - she was babbling, and the longer it went on the less she understood what she was trying to say.  _ Stop the babbling, Marinette! _

“I’m confused,” she finished weakly. Though the airplane she had been watching had made its slow way out of her line of sight, she still didn’t look back at Adrien. The tealights guttered in a light breeze.

She felt Adrien squeeze her hand. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m glad you feel like you can be honest with me. If you need time, I can wait.”

Marinette finally turned to look at him. “You’re not disappointed?”

“No, I’m disappointed,” he said with a rueful half-smile. “But I’m not upset with you. You have a lot on your mind already.”

“I… yeah.” Marinette took a deep shaky breath. “I’m sorry.” She wanted to say more, but her thoughts kept flickering in and out of clarity, like flashes of glare in the corners of her eyes on a sunny day - drawing her attention, then vanishing when she went to look again. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Don’t be sorry. Here, I brought croissants.” Adrien reached behind him and pulled out a box Marinette hadn’t noticed before. “We can talk about this again when you’re ready.”

It wasn’t long before their conversation wandered into other subjects: “I don’t get it, Marinette. How did you stay so calm when Alya started asking whether Ladybug would hibernate in the winter? I almost spit out my water all over the desk.” Before Marinette knew it, the whole box of croissants was gone and Adrien was checking his watch and making a face. “It’s after midnight.”

Marinette winced. “Really? That’s going to make tomorrow morning fun.”

“I can’t wait to hear what excuse you come up with for being late to class,” Adrien joked, standing stiffly and beginning to go around blowing out the candles. 

Marinette laughed and started to fold up the picnic blanket. “Hey, Adrien? Hate to bring business into this, but talking about school reminded me. Should we talk to Nino? You told him about suspecting your father, but we only used him the one time and we haven’t told him about what’s happened since then.”

“Yeah, probably.” Adrien dropped the candles in his hands into a cardboard box at the corner of the roof and gestured for Marinette to do the same with the blanket. “I’ll find a time to go see him.”

Marinette looked around to make sure they had picked everything up. “Cool. Thank you for putting this together. It was really nice.” She smiled at Adrien, who grinned and bowed dramatically in response. He seemed to have picked up on her sincerity, she noted with relief. It _was_ nice, and she would hate for him to think she didn't appreciate the effort. 

“I would  _ bee _ delighted to walk you home, my lady," he said, with a wiggle of his eyebrows to underscore the pun.

Marinette laughed. “It’s late,” she said. “And you live farther away. We’d better go separately.” 

“Ah well, if you insist.” Adrien transformed and picked up the box. “Adieu.” 

Marinette watched him leap away into the darkness before calling up her own transformation and heading for home.

*****

Despite the late hour, Marinette didn’t find herself sleepy when she crept back into her room. She got ready for bed in the dark, only stubbing her toe on the leg of the chaise lounge once, and thought over the evening. She was sure she still adored Adrien as much as ever, but she found herself unable to put her conflicted feelings to rest.  _ What’s the matter with me? _ she wondered as she climbed the ladder up to her bed and crawled under the blanket.

“Are you okay, Marinette?” Tikki asked.

Marinette hugged her pillow. “I - I think so. It just surprised me.” She rolled onto her back, blinking at a dim spot of light that a streetlight below cast through the gap in her curtains and onto the ceiling. “You know, I wanted Adrien to want to be with me. And I honestly wished I could love Chat Noir, too, because he cared about me so much. And now I have  _ both _ , but it feels so  _ weird _ .”

There was a very slight rustle of sheets as Tikki alighted on the pillow, resting against Marinette’s arm. “You know,” she mused, “I wondered if this would happen.”

Marinette lifted her head to better see Tikki’s reflective eyes in the dark. “You did?”

“Mhmm. When you wish for something long enough, it can be really strange if you actually get it. If it makes you feel better, I think you’re being very wise.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” Tikki said firmly. “You’re thinking about your decision and what seems right, instead of just rushing into a relationship because it’s Adrien. I’m really proud of you.”

Marinette smiled halfheartedly, though she knew her kwaami couldn’t see her. “Thanks, Tikki.” She closed her eyes, but in the one a.m. darkness, a thought she would never have wanted to acknowledge in a clearer frame of mind floated to the surface of her consciousness. “Does he only like me because I’m Ladybug, and not because I’m me?”

To her astonishment, Tikki laughed. “Oh, Marinette. I don’t think it’s like that at all. He just has bad timing. This is still very new for both of you - probably too new to be making any big decisions”

“Okay,” Marinette murmured through a yawn. Tikki’s words didn’t entirely put her doubts to rest, but she trusted her kwaami, and the tiredness that she hadn’t felt while she was getting ready for bed was catching up to her. 

As if reading her mind, Tikki drifted over to nuzzle against her cheek. “You should sleep. It’s okay to take some time to figure this all out.”

Marinette yawned again. “You’re the best.” She rolled onto her side, still curled around her pillow, and was soon fast asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to the lovesquare fans. Credit to NathalieAgreste who made an edit a while back of Yellowjacket in the Marichat balcony scene and inspired me to write the scene in. (I don't believe it's been posted anywhere or I would include a link.) 
> 
> As for the next chapter - expect not to wait so long for it! My plan is to be able to reach a major story beat that's not too far away before my summer job starts in the middle of June, end the fic there, and continue the story with a second installment in the fall. (Unfortunately, I'm allergic to planning more than one chapter ahead, so that's very much subject to change.)


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Passing mention of past alcohol abuse.

“Gabriel?” 

He was wandering through a garden: the garden at the back of the house, he thought, but he didn’t remember so many hedges, grown up so high that he couldn’t see his way. Emilie was here, somewhere. He heard her calling for him. A few twists and turns brought him to the stone seat built into the garden wall. She was sitting there, weeping, but as he reached out for her, she froze into a familiar marble statue; his fingers made contact and cracks spread across her form.

Someone was still saying his name. There was a warm pressure on his shoulder. The world suddenly went gray, except for a pair of eyes looking straight at him. Green eyes...no, blue ones.

His own eyes, gummy with sleep, opened, and he looked up at a blurry face that he recognized, gradually, as Nathalie’s. She smiled at him as he struggled to sit up. The room was full of sparkling morning light. His mouth tasted foul, and his head ached.

Nathalie, sitting on the edge of the bed, pressed a glass of water into one of his hands as he rubbed his sticky eyes with the other and then reached for his glasses. “Good morning,” she said, giving him a quick once-over with her eyes. He glanced down and was relieved to find that he had changed into pajamas rather than falling asleep in the previous day’s clothes. “You weren’t drinking in here last night, were you?”

He caught the wariness in her eyes and couldn’t blame her - he had taken to the bottle more than once in the aftermath of Emilie’s death, not enough to qualify him as an alcoholic, he thought, but at least enough to worry Nathalie at the time. But not last night, although he felt bad enough that he almost second-guessed his own memory. He shook his head.

Nathalie sighed. Gabriel looked at her and noticed the dark crescents under her eyes; he wondered how much she had slept. She turned so that she could face him more easily, pulling up one leg and folding it underneath her, and reached out for him. 

This was much too dangerous. He had managed not to let her in the room last night, but his willpower was insufficient to reject the effort she was making now that she was here, looking at him with her calm compassionate eyes, so when she pulled him into a hug he accepted readily. Her hair smelled faintly of something floral. Her hands stroked comfortingly up and down his back, leaving warm tingles in their wake. 

Somehow, with Nathalie there, it felt safer to face his growing realization than it had been last night when he was alone, and on another day he would have fought that fact, but one rearrangement of the way he had ordered his reality was enough to be getting on with; he didn’t have the strength to acknowledge another at the moment. 

“Is that really all there was to it?” he said, quietly. “All she was doing with the miraculous was - was playing with it. She didn’t sacrifice herself. She died by  _ accident _ . Nathalie...I spent all that time wondering what it meant, and it didn’t mean anything.” 

*****

Nathalie continued to rub his back, looking at the carved designs on the headboard of the bed without really seeing them. She had dared once before to wonder if he would finally move on and give up villainy, only to be disappointed before the day was out - but that was before Duusu’s revelation about Emilie. This time, maybe…

_ Maybe what? _ she interrupted herself, accusingly. Maybe he would forget about Emilie and fall in love with her instead? This changed nothing; she had never pursued him and did not intend to start now. Hope beat its wings against her ribs, more delicate than the white moths in the lair upstairs, and she told it to be still.

Gabriel drew back a little and met her gaze. Up close, every crease under his eyes and every bit of gray stubble was clearly visible. He looked exhausted. Nathalie, though she had already prepared herself for the day and put on her makeup like always, doubted that she looked any better. For weeks now, an anxiety that she couldn’t account for even by considering her circumstances had been worsening her already light sleep, and it was requiring thicker and thicker layers of concealer to cover the evidence.

“Thank you, Nathalie,” said Gabriel, drawing her out of her thoughts. There was a quality in his voice that alarmed her, and she had already shifted backwards, letting him go and folding her hands in her lap, before she realized with a pang that he had sounded exactly the same way just before he kissed her.

“Of course,” she said, shielding her thoughts behind the most impassive tone of voice she could manage. A pause to gather herself, and then: “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I almost feel as though I never knew her, but…” He shook his head ruefully. “It hasn’t changed the fact that I love her, or that I made a promise.”

Nathalie looked down at her lap. She didn’t need the peacock miraculous, currently locked away in her desk drawer, to sense his uncertainty. The tracks of habit were worn so deeply in her mind that it only took a moment to make a decision. “I think you should keep trying.”

“Do you?” Gabriel looked at her sharply, then reached over to grab her hand and squeeze it tightly. “I can’t tell you how much your support has mattered to me, all along.”

“I want to see you succeed,” Nathalie replied, almost automatically. She didn’t trust herself to say anything else. 

“I know. You have been essential. I would never have made it so far without you.”

Nathalie had to look away from the earnestness in his eyes, the slight smile that was so rare on his face, and his gray-blond hair ruffled from sleep. For a moment, she felt almost angry that he would be saying such things to her, even after the blow he had received the previous day. She had looked after the house - and him - for weeks after Emilie’s death while he was too smothered in himself and his grief to spare a thought for anyone else’s feelings.  _ That _ was a script she understood. That she could handle. The affection with which he was looking at her now, she could not.

His brow furrowed. “Nathalie, are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said, offering the best reassuring smile she could muster as proof. She noticed the leg that was folded underneath her beginning to tingle, so she unfolded it and planted both feet on the floor next to the bed, grimacing as she did.

Gabriel ran a hand through his hair. “I will keep trying. I have to.” His voice sounded troubled, lacking the conviction she had learned to expect when he spoke on the subject. He looked past Nathalie’s shoulder in the direction the wardrobe she had helped him sort through; she had noticed the boxes, emptied of Emilie’s clothes again and piled in a corner, when she entered. 

She had not believed that anything Duusu said would change his mind. She had encouraged him not to change his mind. She knew he had genuinely loved his wife, and that would not be undone in a day, nor would she want it to. Still, like last time, the loss of a hope she had barely allowed herself to acknowledge momentarily stole her breath with the force of it. Nathalie fought through.

“We will succeed,” she said, reached out and gripped his upper arm.

Pain lanced through her hand and up her own arm from the point of contact, pulsing through muscles and bones all the way up to her shoulder. The intensity of it made her stomach and throat convulse, bringing bile to her mouth. At the same moment, Gabriel cried out. 

Nathalie yanked her hand back and looked at the place she had touched. Gabriel, slowly, raised his arm so he could see it too. A hole the shape of her handprint was burnt into the sleeve of his pajamas, the fabric charred black around the edges, and the skin underneath was bright red and already beginning to blister. They sat in shock for several seconds, long enough for Nathalie to take three deep breaths that smelled vaguely of burning and turn over her hand to stare blankly at the pale, unblemished skin on her palm. 

Slowly, like a sound becoming clearer and clearer as one wakes up, fear and confusion rose in her mind. When she finally met Gabriel’s steel-blue eyes, she saw panic reflected back, and it brought her own into overpowering clarity. Without a word, she stood and fled the room.

*****

It took Gabriel too long to react. The sound of a door slamming, presumably the door of the guest room that Nathalie had claimed as hers, was what jolted him out of his paralysis, and he scrambled out of bed, kicking off the entangling blankets. The hall tiles were shockingly cold on his bare feet when he crossed the threshold of his bedroom, reminding him somewhere in the back of his mind that he was still in pajamas, but his own pain in his upper arm and Nathalie’s fear resonating through the miraculous into his chest drowned out the thought.

When he reached Nathalie’s door, he wrenched on the doorknob, but it was locked from the inside, and only rattled mockingly as he tried to turn it. “Nathalie? Nathalie!” His forehead dropped against the door; he gritted his teeth against the throbbing and stinging of the blackened handprint on his arm. “Let me in,” he pleaded in a softer voice. “Please.”

The silence dragged on, giving his mind time to conjure up a hundred thousand variants on the image of Nathalie inside, on the bed or on the floor, hurt and in pain, his imagination running wild in response to the waves of distress he could feel from inside without even trying. He was tensing up, ready to push away from the door and try to break it down, when he heard her voice, so close that she had to be leaning against the door on her side. “I don’t want to hurt you again. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

The floor tilted underneath him. He pressed his palms against the door at the height of Nathalie’s shoulders and breathed her name. “Don’t worry about me. I” - his voice cracked. “I need to know that you’re all right.”

“No,” came the muffled retort. “ _ You _ shouldn’t be worrying about  _ me _ .”

His miraculous pulsed with the pain that saying so cost her, the longing she felt for his comfort, and he barely restrained himself from striking his fist on the door in sheer frustration at her stubbornness. “God damn it, Nathalie!” he exclaimed. His voice came out rough with distress. It sounded like tearing paper. “I  _ am _ worried. You do so much for me. Just let me do something for you, for once.”

There was a rustle and a thump, and when Nathalie spoke again, the voice came from somewhere around his knees. She had slid down the door to sit on the floor. “Sir,” she said. It sounded like she was about to cry. “You need to leave.”

Gabriel stayed on his feet, taking a deep breath to steady himself. “No. Nathalie, you burned me just by touching me. I don’t know what’s happening, but we need to talk about it.” He gulped, nails biting into his palms. She was entirely too stubborn, and he didn’t know why she had decided not to accept his concern for her, but since she  _ had _ decided, he would never get through to her that way.

The tendrils of distress still emanating from her twisted around him and held him in place. He couldn’t have said whether it was selfless or selfish concern that demanded he find a way to open the door and see her face instead of leaving her to her own devices, but he found himself reaching for an appeal that he knew she would listen to. “This affects all of our safety, as well as our plans.”

It sounded even more manipulative aloud than it had in his head, and he stumbled on the last words, already regretting them. It sickened him to leverage the way she placed the well-being of other above her own, and the quick sting of pain that he felt through his pin - the disappointment, tempered by a sense that she shouldn’t be surprised - sickened him more. But sure enough, he heard her getting to her feet, heard the lock turning. When she opened the door, he could hardly look at her. 

“We need to go to the heroes,” he blurted out before she could speak. “If we turn over our miraculous, maybe they’ll agree to go to the guardian and find a way to fix this.”

Nathalie blinked at him. Her eyes were dry, but red. “What?”

“I’m going to ask for their help,” he repeated. “This isn’t worth” -

“Please don’t say that,” Nathalie interrupted, and there was an undercurrent of pain in her voice that he didn’t understand and fleetingly wondered if he should. “You can’t give up that easily. Not after everything.”

“But you” -

“If you get your wish,” she said flatly, “if you turn back time, it will be as though this never happened. No harm will have been done.”

“And in the meantime?” Gabriel snapped, feeling frustration swelling up. “If you won’t accept your own safety as a motivating factor to do something about this, at least accept mine and Adrien’s.” 

“I’ll renounce the black cat miraculous and stop using it,” she retorted. “I can go back to Mayura now.” Her eyes darted sideways as she spoke. Gabriel could still sense agitation from her, but she was rapidly taking back her control, struggling valiantly to push it down, and succeeding to an astonishing degree; he almost had to stretch to find the fear that had called out to him from down the hall just minutes before. Not for the first time, he cursed her almost superhuman ability to suppress her emotions.

He clenched his fists behind his back. “We don’t know that that will work!” 

“We don’t know that it won’t. You realize how serious the consequences will be if we turn ourselves in to the heroes. I cannot allow you to give up on your goal and bring that down on both of us - and on Adrien.” Nathalie’s eyes flashed, cold as a winter sky. With her wearing her usual heels, and him still barefoot, they were almost eye-to-eye, and Gabriel, who had so often relied on this very stubbornness and determination, now felt himself cowed before it.

“Give me the ring,” he said, summoning all the sternness he could muster.

Nathalie nodded. “Plagg?” The kwaami appeared from behind her. “I renounce you,” she said, and with a yelp, Plagg was sucked into the ring in a streak of green. She slipped the ring off her finger and dropped it into Gabriel’s waiting hand. 

Gabriel closed his hand around it gingerly, not trusting that it wouldn't burn him. “I’ll be locking this up,” he warned. “In a new safe.”

Nathalie’s eyebrows lifted. “If you like. Now, I suggest you go get dressed. You have a video conference in” - she checked her watch - “half an hour.”

It took Gabriel a moment to catch up with her dizzyingly fast switch from miraculous wielder to executive assistant, and when he did, he suspected that she was using it as an evasion. But the video conference was a real enough concern - now that he was reminded of it, he remembered her telling him about it - and keeping up appearances was, he reminded himself, an important part of protecting them both.

“This conversation is not over,” he said, frowning back at her as he turned away in the direction of his bedroom. She only nodded once in response. Gabriel turned his back to her and stalked down the hall, barely seeing anything around him. He didn’t know how long it had been since they had exchanged such sharp words. But she was far too much like him - inclined to hide, to lick her wounds in secret. When he reached his bedroom and shut the door behind him, he reached up to touch the handprint branded onto his arm, only to jerk his hand away at the pain. Dread stole over him. Whether it was his own, or Nathalie’s that she was allowing herself to feel again now that she supposed he was no longer paying attention, he could not have said, but either way, as he went about getting ready, he wished she would let him comfort her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the events of this chapter are what came into my head in January and compelled me to expand this fic from the MUCH shorter and simpler thing it was supposed to be.
> 
> I haven't been this excited to see reactions since the chapter with the kiss.


	22. Chapter 22

For the rest of the morning, Nathalie touched everything warily, as though it might dissolve in her hands. For all she knew, it might.

Gabriel had frowned sternly at her when he came rushing into the atelier five minutes late for his conference with hair still damp from the shower, but he didn’t have the time to tell her off for working then, and when the meeting ended she had hidden herself behind a flurry of papers, trying to look like she was occupied with something that couldn’t wait and shouldn’t be interrupted. It had worked - that is, Gabriel hadn’t tried to convince her to leave. She was no longer sure if that was a victory or not. It was barely midday, and she was already exhausted by her hyper-vigilance against any sign that her earlier episode was about to repeat itself; her stomach kept twisting, her breath coming too quick and too shallow, no matter how often she paused to try to collect herself and refocus on her work.

Not much was getting done. She suspected, from the frequency of Gabriel’s glances over at her, that he couldn’t concentrate either. She didn’t know what, if anything, he had done to treat the burn on his arm, but he winced slightly whenever he moved it, and kept reaching up to touch the spot gingerly. Guilt struck her fresh every time.

No words were spoken between them until nearly lunchtime. Nathalie would ordinarily bring food from home, unless she had stayed over at the mansion, when she would walk to her favorite cafe nearby. The cafe had been her plan for today, but she quietly dreaded the idea of going out in public and making small talk with the man behind the counter at a time like this. Though a long look in the bathroom mirror and a hundred anxious glances at her hands had confirmed that her appearance was unchanged, she had the uncanny sense that whatever was happening to her, she was marked by it even more grotesquely and decisively than Gabriel was marked by the burn she had given him - that any stranger on the street could pick her out as cursed. So it was both a surprise and a relief when her employer approached her desk and stiffly asked her to eat with him instead.

Neither of them, it seemed, quite knew what to say as they sat down corner-wise at one end of the great dining table. Nathalie picked at the beef bourguignon the cook had brought. Her stomach, clenched with anxiety, resisted every bite.

Gabriel broke the silence first. “Nathalie,” he asked, and paused, weighing his next words. “Why are you so determined that I should keep going?”

It would have been too much to hope for that the conversation wouldn’t verge dangerously on things Nathalie could not let herself hint at. She swallowed, and settled on: “What other choice is there?”

Gabriel frowned, but inclined his head in an invitation to elaborate.

“As I see it, you have three options,” she went on. “You can continue as Hawkmoth. You can stop, but not turn yourself in. Or you can go to the heroes for help, like you suggested earlier. We don’t know if they will be willing to help, but it’s very likely that they would expose us publicly, whether they helped or not. That will bring down consequences not only on us, but on Adrien as well. 

“If you simply stop being Hawkmoth, then whatever this is” - she curled and uncurled her left hand - “will continue and perhaps get worse.” As hard as she struggled to keep her voice matter-of-fact, it cracked a bit as she spoke. She saw Gabriel’s eyes narrow, but pushed ahead. “That leaves continuing. If you get your wish, everything will be reversed - not only Emilie’s death, but this as well.”

Silence met the end of her speech as Gabriel considered it, staring at her almost sadly. “I don’t like it,” he said finally. “It took this long to get one of the two miraculous, and now Ladybug will be twice as much on guard against other tricks. What if it’s too late for you by the time I succeed?” Nathalie opened her mouth to respond, but he wasn’t finished. “And frankly, Nathalie, I’m not certain I trust you not to involve yourself.” 

She frowned back at him. “Then you misjudge me. I understand the severity of the situation perfectly well. If I would be a liability, given my… condition… I will certainly stay out of it.” A bit of frustration seeped into her tone on the word “liability,” despite her best efforts to sound more neutral than she felt. Gabriel’s brows furrowed. 

“You’re not a liability, ” he said quickly, leaning forward. “I’m concerned about  _ you _ . If I did keep going, would you be able to promise to stay out of it for your own sake?”

In fact, his worry was hardly necessary. Nathalie did have some limits, though she had begun to suspect that they were fewer in number than they should be, and she had no choice but to admit to herself that her further participation would be unwise - especially given her growing suspicion that it had been another episode of uncontrolled magic that caused the rooftop to crumble under her during her last fight. Even her earlier statement, that she could still be Mayura, seemed more than a little reckless now. “I promise.” 

“Thank you.”

“So,” she prompted cautiously, “you do plan to continue?” 

She couldn’t have said how she felt about the prospect. 

Gabriel let out a breath. “I don’t know. I want there to be another way. Maybe the grimoire…?” He trailed off helplessly; their examination of the book so far had not revealed anything that seemed related.

There was a short silence before Nathalie gathered herself. “Just don’t do anything rash,” she conceded. “Continue as Hawkmoth, or not, but don’t go to the heroes yet. Some other solution may turn up.” She hesitated, then went on: “If you don’t mind my asking, you have my promise not to participate any further; why are you so determined  _ not _ to continue?”

Gabriel paled, swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at Nathalie with an expression that might have been surprise, irritation, confusion, or all three at once. She could practically see him trying out answers in his head, though she could only guess and perhaps hope at what any of them were. “I do mind your asking,” he said at last, in a tone that reached for but didn’t quite achieve his usual dismissive bite.

Nathalie’s cheeks flushed as she nodded in acquiescence. Her follow-up question -  _ what about Emilie? _ \- stuck in her throat. She had pushed too far already. But her curiosity, fueled by the mischievous voice of hope that was so hard to silence, burned at her mind. There was a simple explanation, of course. It was not one she was prepared to believe. 

She glanced at her watch, relieved to see that the hands had moved far enough to give her an out from this conversation. Gabriel noticed the gesture. “One more thing,” he said before she could speak, and she looked up to see that his expression and manner had shifted again, to something still tense but no longer defensive. “I think it’s time to be honest with Adrien.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in; then, for the first time that day, a hint of a smile pulled at Nathalie’s mouth. “I think you’re right.”

“To prepare him. In case we need to… change our approach.”

“We won’t,” Nathalie said, shaking her head at his hint. “But he should know, all the same. He deserves the truth.”

Gabriel nodded once. Though determination was written clearly on his face, Nathalie noticed his thumb running fretfully over a carved whirl on the arm of the chair, and she couldn’t blame him; though he claimed to be sure that Adrien would support him once he understood the situation, she suspected he had his doubts. Heaven knew  _ she _ did. 

“Today,” he said. “After he gets back from school.”

Nathalie blinked in surprise. “Very well. In that case…” She stood, smoothing her blazer, and Gabriel followed suit, though not without a disapproving look at her barely-touched plate. 

“I don’t want you working any more today. Go up to your room and rest.” When Nathalie hesitated, he added: “Please?”

Wrung out, body and mind, by the anxiety of the morning, Nathalie found herself unable to object. “All right,” she said quietly. She turned to go, but was surprised when Gabriel placed a hand in the middle of her back and ushered her through the door.

*****

Gabriel paced. Having returned the miraculous to Nathalie and seen her to her room, he had gone back to the atelier in the hopes of getting some sketches finished, and found it impossible. His head hurt. Emilie’s portrait stared down at him. 

His fingers curled. Nathalie’s looks of mute disapproval, and occasional fear when she was caught in the crossfire, had long since prompted him to work on his habit of breaking things. Unfortunately, that left sitting - or rather pacing - with the thoughts her questions at lunch had stirred up. His circuit of the room turned him back toward the portrait. The urge struck him to tear straight through her painted smile.

*****

Nathalie stood in front of the mirror in her room, looking at her disconcertingly normal appearance, running a thumb along the edge of the brooch on her chest. She very deliberately avoided probing the pulse of distress she could feel from downstairs. She wasn’t hoping; she wouldn’t. Her chest tightened, and something tingled strangely, like static electricity across her skin.

“Miss Nathalie?”

Nathalie rubbed her hands up and down her arms. The tingle wouldn’t subside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm once again dropping in to post a chapter and assure you guys that I haven't died. To be honest, it's been a really rough few weeks. I finally started work, only to be faced with the unexpectedly early and almost certainly permanent closure of my workplace, a camp where I've been involved almost my whole life and have worked now for five summers - this is the sixth. It was - is - a really hard blow on top of the job being incredibly demanding anyway. I know I don't exactly owe strangers on the internet an explanation of why I haven't updated lately (or why I've had my Discord servers muted for two weeks straight, whoops), but it feels fair since y'all have been so loyal and I left you at a tense moment in the story. Getting back to writing this fic has made me happier, but I hope you'll forgive me if this chapter is a little lackluster. There's a lot on my mind. (Besides...the next and last chapter should make up for it!) <3


	23. Chapter 23

When Adrien came home from school that day, he was surprised to find his father waiting for him just inside the foyer, looking even stiffer than usual. 

“Hello, Adrien,” he said in a painfully uneasy tone. “How was your day at school?”

“It was - good,” Adrien answered, looking up at his father in confusion. Normally he would have loved the opportunity to tell him about his day, but something felt off - like there was more to this conversation than one of Gabriel’s bouts of parental guilt - and Adrien’s confusion stopped him from launching into a discussion of the morning’s chemistry quiz and the board game his friends had tried to teach him at lunch.

His suspicion was confirmed a moment later. “I need to speak with you about something.” Gabriel said shortly, then turned without waiting for an answer and walked into the dining room. Adrien trailed after him, and when he sat down rigidly at the edge of one of the chairs, took a seat across from him.

The silence drew on just long enough to be uncomfortable - or rather, more uncomfortable than the whole situation already was. Adrien shifted his feet.

“Father, is this the same thing you wanted to talk about the day Aunt Amelie and Felix visited?” he asked. “You never did tell me what that was about.” As soon as he spoke, he realized it might not be a good idea to remind his father of the way that conversation had ended, but Gabriel only sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, it is. Adrien, there is no easy way to explain this. I only ask that you hear me out to the end.” Gabriel paused. Adrien watched him, but he was looking somewhere off to the side, rather than meeting his son’s eyes. At last, he swallowed and seemed to steel himself to go on. “I am - that is to say, I was” - and he broke off, head snapping up and eyes widening. “Nathalie!”

Adrien hadn’t seen or heard anything, but his father was already on his feet. He raced out of the dining room toward the front stairs and bounded up them two at a time, having apparently forgotten all about Adrien, who followed as best he could, panting as he tried to keep up with Gabriel’s longer strides. They were heading in the direction of Nathalie’s room. And...was that a smell of something burning?

Gabriel wrenched the door open, and Adrien, three steps behind him, skidded to a halt in the doorway, staring in shock at the scene in front of him. Nathalie sat on the floor in the middle of a massive scorched circle. She and her clothes seemed undamaged, but twists of smoke rose from the blackened carpet around her, and the furniture near her - a nightstand, a floor lamp, the corner of the bed - seemed to have been seared to charcoal. On her hands and around her eyes, her veins stood out, unnaturally dark.

She scrambled back with a sobbing noise as Gabriel rushed to her side. “No! Don’t touch me.”

“I’m not afraid,” Gabriel said, and gathered her in his arms. She was either too weak to resist, or didn’t really want to, because she allowed him to pull her half into his lap, curled up against him. He looked up at Adrien, who was still standing mute in the doorway, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. What had been done to the floor, to the furniture, looked like...like the effects of a cataclysm.

“Adrien,” Gabriel said sharply, “Go wait downstairs, please. I’ll come and explain all of this.”

Adrien couldn’t move. The way his father had sensed Nathalie’s distress - the blackened room, and Marinette’s suspicion that Madame Malheur was struggling with her powers - the whole scene confirmed what he had already suspected. He felt nothing except a strange detachment, as if his emotional center had thrown up its hands and walked away, at a loss for how to process it all. “I think I understand enough,” he said, “Hawkmoth.”

Gabriel winced. “This is… not how I wanted you to find out.” Then confusion crossed his face, and his brows furrowed. “Wait, but - how…?”

Adrien shook his head. He didn’t want to wait for his father to figure out that he was making connections only one of the heroes could have made. When he spoke, his voice came out flat and cold. “You thought there was a way I could find out that would make me take it well? This is what you were going to tell me just now, isn’t it? You thought you could get me on your side. Well, I’m not.” He turned to walk away.

“Adrien, wait!” It was Nathalie’s voice, raw and rasping but determined, and Adrien stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. She had raised her head and was gazing steadily back at him, though he could see her trembling even from a distance. “It was because of your mother,” she said. “He was trying to use the power of the ladybug and the black cat to bring her back to life.”

Adrien spun back around to face him. “You told me she was  _ missing! _ ”

“Adrien, just let me explain” - Gabriel began, but Adrien cut him off.

“No. I’m leaving.”

Neither of them made any further attempts to dissuade him as he left the room and headed for his own, walking faster and faster until he was jogging through the empty corridor. He was vaguely conscious of the blurry yellow shape of Pollen flying beside him. As he jerked open the door to his room, he realized tears were started to fill his eyes. 

He pulled out his phone and dialed Marinette, who answered immediately. “Adrien?”

“Marinette,” he replied, and went on over top of the concerned noise she made when she heard the choked quality of his voice. “We were right. About my father and Nathalie.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath. “You mean, that they’re” - her voice dropped to a whisper - “the villains?”

“Yeah.” Adrien held the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he grabbed his backpack and started to stuff it with a few changes of clothes. There had been no sign that his father meant to come after him, but his heart still palpitated, and he found himself fumbling in his haste.

“Do they know about you? Do they know that you know?”

“No and yes.”

“Okay.” The speed with which Marinette was talking betrayed her anxiety, but Adrien could tell how hard she was trying to hold it together for him and not become frantic. “They know you know. How did they take it? Are you free to talk to me? Leave the house?”

“I - I think so.” The tears were sliding down Adrien’s cheeks now, and he paused in his packing long enough to wipe them off and adjust the phone. “My father - I think he wanted me to know. And he’s busy worrying about Nathalie.”

“Nathalie? What happened to Nathalie?” Marinette’s voice was alarmed.

“I’ll tell you in person. I’m actually packing an overnight bag right now. Can I come stay at yours for a bit?”

“Of course,” Marinette said instantly. “My parents shouldn’t ask any questions. I’ll deal with it if they do.”

“That’s fine.” Adrien made a beeline for the bathroom to gather up toiletries. 

Marinette took a deep breath. “Do you want me to stay on the phone? Because if not, I’ll call our mutual friend right now, while you’re on the way.”

It took Adrien a moment to recognize their code for Master Fu. Of course, he needed to know. “No, go ahead and call him. I’ll be there as soon as I can. See you soon, Marinette.”

“See you soon,” she echoed, and the line went dead.

Once Adrien finished packing what he needed from his room, he crept downstairs to the door of the atelier. Trying it very cautiously, he found the room unlocked and unoccupied. It was a matter of moments to retrieve his own important documents from the file where they were kept. Then he approached the massive painting of his mother.

The combined knowledge that she was dead and that her death had catalyzed the whole disaster that was Hawkmoth gave the painting, which he had always considered beautiful if a bit over-the-top, a disturbing aspect, and Adrien avoided looking up at its face. It took a few tries, but he remembered the combination of buttons that opened the safe. The miraculous grimoire was in its place, with several loose papers that Adrien didn’t remember tucked inside the cover. He took the lot and stuffed it in his backpack. A quick search through the safe revealed nothing else of immediate interest: specifically, none of the three miraculous that his father and Nathalie possessed. Disappointed, he closed the safe and made his exit. 

*****

Marinette was waiting when Adrien arrived at the bakery. Before he even reached for the door, she opened it with the sound of a bell jingling and pulled him inside, into warmth and the scent of yeast and cinnamon, and into a hug made only slightly awkward by his overfilled backpack. He pressed his face into her shoulder and breathed in the bakery smell clinging to her hair. 

“I told my parents that you had a situation at home and would need to stay with us for a little while,” she whispered. “They’re fine with it.” 

“Thank you,” he whispered back, and reluctantly let her go. He noticed her mother behind the counter, watching with a look of maternal concern, but she smiled when he met her eyes. He answered with an uncomfortable wave. “Um… thank you for letting me stay, Ms. Cheng.”

“Oh, of course,” she answered warmly. “And you can call me Sabine. Marinette, why don’t you show Adrien the guest room?”

The guest room was tiny with yellow walls, barely big enough for a bed, a nightstand, a low dresser, and a straight-backed wooden chair. Adrien loved it immediately. He set his backpack down on the chair and sat on the bed, running his fingers along the seams of what looked like an old handmade quilt on the bed. Marinette sat beside him.

“The quilt was my great-grandmother’s on my father’s side,” she said.

“It’s nice.”

A tense silence fell between them, broken only by the distant clattering of pans and the sound of the bell over the door. Adrien jumped when he heard the bell. Marinette noticed, and interpreted it correctly. “Hey,” she said, putting a hand on his knee. “Your father will have to go through my parents if he shows up here.” 

Adrien took a deep breath. “Yeah...yeah. I’m not afraid, he wouldn’t try to do anything to me. I just - don’t want to face him right now.”

“I get it.” One of Marinette’s legs started to bounce nervously. “So...why don’t you tell me what happened?”

*****

Nathalie made a soft, vague noise of protest as Gabriel gathered her in his arms, but seemed too exhausted - physically or mentally or both - to offer any real resistance. He carried her out of the ruined guest room, down the empty corridor and into his own bedroom. She allowed him to sit her down on the edge of his bed and kneel down to take off her shoes. As he did, she shrugged out of her blazer. The sleeves of the sweater underneath rode up slightly as she shifted, revealing that the lacework of too-dark veins crawled up her wrists as well.

“Gabriel,” she said, little louder than a whisper. He looked up to see tear tracks on her cheeks, and immediately reached for her hands, clasping them between his own before she could pull them away. “You shouldn’t do that,” she said anxiously. “What if I hurt you?”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, for the second time that afternoon.

Nathalie took a long, shaky breath, not meeting his eyes, and said in a very small voice, “... I am.”

“I know.” Gabriel got up from his place kneeling before her, walked round to the other side of the bed from where she was sitting, and pulled back the covers. “We can figure this out once you’ve rested.”

To his surprise, Nathalie’s cheeks reddened. “Oh. I - I couldn’t.”

“Nathalie. Please.” When she hesitated, he added: “I don’t want you to be alone, and I’m sure you don’t either. And I can tell you’re tired. Just sleep for a bit. I’ll have food brought up later on.”

Shyly, Nathalie nodded.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll only be a moment.”

He returned to her room - skirting around the burnt patch of floor that crackled and groaned when he stepped too close - and found a set of pajamas in her overnight bag, then came back and allowed her to step into the attached bathroom to change. He could see her fear in the way she kept her arms wrapped around herself as she emerged, hesitant to touch anything, but she relaxed by a tiny fraction when he slid into the bed next to her, still dressed and sitting up against the pillows, and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her close. She started to shake as he held her. After a moment, he realized that the tremors were muffled sobs.

“Oh, my Nathalie,” he whispered, surprising himself.  _ His _ Nathalie? He looked down at her. Her face was buried against his chest, but he could see the pale curve of her cheek and the dyed streak in her hair. His fingers moved of their own accord to trail along her jaw.

Very well. His Nathalie, if she would accept it. He didn’t know how he had denied it for so long.

“I’m so afraid,” she muttered, and her voice broke off in a heavier sob.

Even after her first time using the peacock miraculous, when he had found her limp with bloody lips on the floor of the lair, he had never heard her sound this defeated. He shifted and placed a lingering kiss on her forehead. “You have every right to be, and I don’t think any less of you for it. But I promise you, my dear, I will fix this.” 

Her reply, spoken into the front of her shirt, was too muffled to make out. “Sorry?”

Nathalie stirred, lifting her face from his chest, leaving a damp patch where the tears had soaked into his shirt. Her gaze was piercing, and her voice - shaky as it was - an indictment. “Haven’t you learned your lesson about making promises?”

He didn’t have an answer, so he pulled her in again and started to stroke her hair. In the end, he never sent for food. Nathalie’s exhaustion from the day won out quickly over her agitated state. Gabriel stayed awake for some time watching her, listening to her breathing in the fear that it might stop, but it stayed steady, and it was soothing. He was disturbed only once, by a terse text message from Adrien: _Safe. At a friend's._ Hours later, as sunset faded into gray dusk, and without meaning to, he followed Nathalie down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, we've reached the end - except, as you can probably tell, not really the end! Keep an eye out for the as-yet-unnamed sequel, coming some time in September.
> 
> I want to say a huge thank-you to everyone who's been reading. Here's a secret: I've always loved the idea of creative writing, but never actually wrote anything (either fanfic or original) beyond tiny scenes and fragments until very recently. Another, unfinished, fic of mine that didn't even hit 6k is the next longest thing I've written in my life. So this story, which took over six months and turned out with the word-count equivalent of a short novel, was a real adventure, not to mention an exercise in learning as I went. (How does one plot? How does one foreshadow? Who knows? Not me!) I never dreamed I could write something of this scale and I certainly never would have predicted how many people would enjoy it. It was your response that enabled me to get this far. So seriously, thanks, and I hope some of you will be back in the fall to find out what happens next.


End file.
